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LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 


PRINCETON. N. J. 


PURCHASED BY THE HAMILL MISSIONARY FUND. 


vn Aah. 


“BV 2060 .M26 1926 
McFadyen, Joseph Ferguson, 


1873- 
ea MLSS LOpeLy idea in 








Va ac 


‘ eo ‘ 1 
nh TAP iio 
f hae te it? 
Me CVT DR OAS : 


i 





THE LIFE AND RELIGION SERIES 


EDITED BY 


FRANK K. SANDERS 
AND 
HENRY A. SHERMAN 


THE MISSIONARY IDEA IN LIFE 
AND RELIGION 


LIFE AND RELIGION SERIES 


EDITED BY 


FRANK K. SANDERS 
AND 


HENRY A. SHERMAN 












Concise handbooks for those who, either as individuals or in col- 
leges, in community schools of religion, or in Bible classes, desire a 
proper foundation for the more detailed study of the Bible or of 


related subjects. 
VOLUMES 


PsycHo.ocy ror Brste Teacuers. (Now ready) 

Op TrestaMENT History. (Now ready) 

Otp TEesTAMENT PropHecy. (Now ready) 

JEsus AND His TEACHINGS 

BEGINNINGS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 

HistoricaAL DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIANITY (Now ready) 
SoctaL IDEALS AND TEACHINGS OF THE BIBLE 

Tue Wort.p’s Livine Retiatons (Now ready) 

Tue Iprats oF CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP 

Tue DEVELOPMENT oF MopErRN MISSIONS 


Tue Misstonary Ipra in Lire AND RELIGION 
(Now Ready) 


Historica Mernop 1x Briste Srupy. (Now Ready) 
Other volumes to be announced 





















N OF Pring 
<n 
AS AV [APRS ayy 


‘Life and Religion Series’ 2 2 9) 






THE 
MISSIONARY IDEA IN LIFE 
AND RELIGION 


BY 
J. F.,McFADYEN, M.A., D.D. 


FORMERLY PRINCIPAL OF HISLOP COLLEGE, NAGPUR, INDIA, AND SINCE 1920 PROFESSOR 
OF NEW TESTAMENT LITERATURE AND CRITICISM IN QUEEN’S 
THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE, KINGSTON, CANADA 


AUTHOR OF “‘ JESUS AND LIFE”’ AND “ THROUGH ETERNAL SPIRIT” 


NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1926 


Copyricut, 1926, By 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 





Printed in the United States of America 





TO 
MARION 


fi Nuh 


Behn 





PREFACE 


This volume seeks to discuss in a non-technical way 
_ the questions which arise in the minds of many intelli- 
gent men and women, both old and young, in regard to 
the missionary enterprise. Is it as truly a function of 
the Christian life as worship or service? Is it a personal 
responsibility or only a corporate one? Must one who 
wishes to consider his duties as a Christian dispassion- 
ately avoid or include an interest in the moral and 
spiritual concerns of other people? What kind of an 
interest is legitimate and what is illegitimate? How 
does a missionary spend his time; what does he hope to 
accomplish; what sustains him in his efforts, when 
ccnfronted by political or social or other difficulties ? 
What does the non-Christian think about it all? 
What permanent and useful results does missionary 
work show? Why should we contribute to it? What 
induces men and women to invest their lives in mis- 
sionary work? After all, is it really worth while? Such 
questions as these are being turned over in the minds of 
many friendly but inquiring people in these days, when 
the whole world is becoming intimate in a way unreal- 
ized a generation ago and other peoples are no longer 
vaguely dismissed from mind as pagans, but recognized 
as beings whose interests closely parallel our own and 
whose thinking along the lines of religion may have 
some value for us. 

There seems to be abundant room for a volume which 
deals with these questions and others like them in 
a frank, yet friendly, manner. The writer, Professor 
' McFadyen, of Queen’s Theological College, Kingston, 
Ontario, has been singularly well prepared in experi- 

vil 


viil PREFACE 


ence to interpret the mission enterprise to men and 
women of the present day. He studied at Glasgow; 
for twenty years he was a missionary of the United 
Free Church of Scotland at Nagpur, C. P., India. In 
view of his Indian experience, he was asked, in addi- 
tion to his work on the New Testament, at Queen’s, 
to undertake the Lectureship on Missions. He thus 
brings to his task the reading and study of many 
years. 

It is hoped that the volume will strike a fresh note in 
the fairly extensive literature of to-day which seeks to 
interpret the larger grasp of religious idealism and op- 
portunity which a world message implies. It is the keen 
desire of author and editors alike that it may help to 
draw more men and women into the fellowship of those 
who value life chiefly as an opportunity for passing on 
to others the deeper and finer values of the Christi- 
anity they profess. 


February, 1926. 


Tue Epirors. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 
I. Tue Misstonary ImputseEIN Lire ..... 1 


l. THE MISSIONARY IDEAL IN RELIGION A MI- 
NORITY PROGRAM Tae Nee ee OW 1] 


2. THIS IDEAL IN OTHER SPHERES QUITE COM- 
CRT. (iti bee 2s hs RE UNE RUE RR TEE nia PGCE LE PEA ab Q 


3. WISE ADMINISTRATORS UPHOLD MORAL AND 
BETIGIOUS IDEAIS (hy oi) eee eb fe 4 


4, IT IS NOT ONLY CHRISTIAN IDEALS THAT 
AROUSE! OPPOSITION | i ee ea ee hy 5 


5. TRUTH IS SOMETHING TO BE SHARED 


6. IS RELIGION AN EXCEPTION? . . . 


Il. Ture Misstonary IppAIN THE GOSPELS ... 8 
1. THE NEW TESTAMENT A VOLUME OF MISSION- 
RENE PETLAT CB aio oe eh oo aie ele ure ie 8 
2. JESUS AN INDEFATIGABLE MISSIONARY 
8. JESUS’ ATTITUDE TO THE GENTILE WORLD . 9 
So DO THEOIBW FIRST 6 6 eh lekia kis us 11 
5. JESUS’ ANTI-GENTILE BIAS ONLY APPARENT . 12 
6. JESUS’ REAL ATTITUDE SHOWN IN HIS MIN- 


RENMEI? Sue Yt otic uae OM Meek Onn wh etn URE Lp 
7. THE RESURRECTION MISSIONARY COMMISSION 14 

Ill. Tsar Missionary Ipra IN THE APOSTOLIC 
Doo 7 Tes at 9 Sea TRE Se RNS ee Sub heheh ea CA DORR SSE TRH Q 5 


1, EARLY MISSIONARY ACTIVITY. ...... 16 
ix 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


2. THE CONTROVERSY OVER THE RECEPTION OF 
GENTILE CONVERTS 2.080. Ue 16 


38. THE MEN WHO DELIVERED CHRISTIANITY 
FROM(SUDAISMG Ue Vane aia Senge 18 


4, CHRISTIANITY’S COMPLETE DELOCALIZATION 20 


5. WHY WERE THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCHES 
NOT URGED TO EVANGELIZE?. ..... Q1 


6. THE NEW TESTAMENT GOSPEL ESSENTIALLY 
A UNIVERSAL MESSAGE 2. 604 080.0 00. Q29 


IV. Tur Missionary IDEA IN THE HISTORY OF THE 


CAUORCH cia GER otceu US Re dake aie aaa at ee 
1. THE EARLY HISTORY OF MISSIONS GENERALLY 
UNFAMILIAR} pices ies Desde hog aainticte tins ae Ones 
2. FACTORS IN THE RAPID SPREAD OF THE 
EARGY CHURCH (0) 34 CR aa Q4 
8. SOME HISTORICAL DATA ......-646 ce 25 
4. CHRISTIANITY IN THE FAR EAST. ..... oY 
5. OBJECTIONABLE MISSIONARY METHODS. . . Q7 
6 THE COMPARATIVE UNIMPORTANCE OF 
METHODS 113055 CO he 
7. THE METHOD OF THE UNJUST STEWARD .. 30 


8. LANGUAGE MASTERY AN IMPORTANT FACTOR 31 


9. FACTORS THAT MAKE FOR PERMANENCE TO- 
DAYS Oi es a ate ea 31 


V. A ConsIDERATION OF SOME OBJECTIONS TO THE 
MissIonNARY ENTERPRISE. ........ 33 


1. THE WORTH OF THE NON-CHRISTIAN RE- 
TIGIONS 0.5 SOA ee ns ee 33 


2. THE UNIQUENESS OF CHRISTIANITY QUES- 
TIONED (600 00 68 teth eee oe LE ee 34 


eC Oe OO & 


CONTENTS 


RELIGION AS A FUNCTION OF THE NATIONAL 
SPIRE a Sali a MAR Na aaa a elm arth ety ely iia, Naas 


THE DENATIONALIZING INFLUENCE OF CHRIS- 
ELA VES a) gee Te LY RAR hn OM ur PST 8, 


OUTWARD CHANGES DUE TO CHRISTIANITY . 
THE REAL TRANSFORMATION ...... . 
CHRISTIANITY RENATIONALIZES . .... . 
IT CHALLENGES AGE-LONG ABUSES .. . 


A TRUE ASSIMILATION TO CHRISTIANITY RE- 
CULE DEMIS ih iit ay, eat hae Ana ON Ta, 


VI. Reasons ADVANCED AGAINST ITs URGENCY. . 


1. 


RELIGIOUS PROPAGANDA SOMETIMES DEEMED 
IMPERTINEN DE cite ki stidaiicenteniieant reat mise iret ie 


RELIGION EXPRESSES LIFE’S VALUES... . 
THE NEED FOR COURTESY IN MISSION WORK 


IT IS HANDICAPPED BY THE FAILURES OF 
WHSLEEN: CHRISTEANT EY ye ete slate! te ie 


THE SUPREME TEST IS THE CHARACTER OF 
ELE CABIN WRCRD DED oh) 0) ai biel ied ideaiie Nadie’ mvs 


SOME CRITICISMS OF CONVERTS ARE UN- 
BEOONIDE ED ED Sra eK eth al ant oti) bi Halvineiveehiie) Lo eit ei 


CAREFUL DISCRIMINATION ESSENTIAL .. . 
WHITE EMPLOYERS AND COLORED WORKMEN 


CHRISTIAN LABOR NOT NECESSARILY THE 
LAST TROUBLESOME | oy is), ehieiiliannce lel iis. 


OTHER CONSIDERATIONS ........ 
THE REALITY OF CHANGED LIVES .... 


DIMINISHING EMPHASIS ON THE FUTURE LIFE 


43 


45 


45 
45 
AT 


AT 


49 


50 
51 
51 


53 
53 
54 
57 


Xil 


CONTENTS 


VOT. . Tae Missionary Ame Para ee as 


L. 


2. 
3. 


THE CONVERSION OF INDIVIDUALS 

PHILANTHROPIC WORK. ........ 

ILLUSTRATIONS OF MISSIONARY ACTIVITY . 
(a) BIBLE TRANSLATION... ..... 


(b) CO-OPERATIVE CREDIT ....... 


4. PREPARATION FOR THE GOSPEL ...... 


5. ESTABLISHING A CHRISTIAN CHURCH ... 


6. TIME REQUIRED FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF - 


THE CHRISTIAN SPIRIT. 


VIII. Tue Misstonany Motive ........ 


- THE COMMERCIAL MOTIVE .. 


- POLITICAL AGGRANDIZEMENT AS A MISSION- 


ARY MOTIVE SOW ah er 


TRUE CHRISTIANITY UPHOLDS NATIONAL 
LOVADT ie Fete 


DENOMINATIONAL AGGRANDIZEMENT UNWOR- 
THY AS AN AIM e . °. ° ° ° od . . e . . 


5. THE JEWS WERE EFFECTIVE MISSIONARIES . 


THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH BELIEVED THAT RE- 
LIGION SHOULD BESHARED ...... 


ITS MOTIVE NOT THE RELIEF OF PAIN NOR 
THE ALLEVIATION OF POVERTY . . 


8. NOR PRIMARILY MORAL REFORM. ..... 


10. 


Li. 


- THE CONCEPTION OF CHRISTIANITY AS A RE- 


LIGION OF HEALING CAME LATER 


DELIVERANCE FROM ETERNAL PUNISHMENT 
AS A MISSIONARY MOTIVE 


THE REFORM OF SOCIAL ABUSES A PERMA- 
NENT MISSIONARY TASK . .... . 


PAGE 


59 
59 
60 
62 
62 
66 
68 
69 


70 


72 
72 


73 


75 


76 
TE 


78 


78 
79 


80 


81 


82 


CONTENTS 


12. THE MISSIONARY MOTIVE IN MODERN MIS- 
RIONAHY BIOGRAPHY | se Nee eR Woo 


13. CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF SALVATION . . 


IX. InevirasBite Hanpicars In Missionary Work 


1. CHRISTIAN INFLUENCES PART OF AN AMAL- 
GAM . . . ° ° . . ° ° ° . . . . . . 


2. THE INFLUENCE OF WESTERN ECONOMIC 
SE Ns Goi ahha ty, a Bh eae wide yaw laden? avie 


3. THE INFLUENCE OF WESTERN CASTE SYSTEMS 
4, THE INFLUENCE OF WESTERN RACE FEELING 


5. THE INFLUENCE OF WESTERN BELIEF IN 
FORCE . e . ° . . . . . . . . ° ° . 


6. THE INFLUENCE OF WESTERN POLITICAL 
EPPMOLINA DIR oo eve) rag et a Ver eT ee el ae 


7. CHRISTIANITY REGARDED AS THE WHITE 
MANE RERIGION (ars eee eke te ee, 


8. THE INABILITY OF CHRISTIANITY TO MAKE 
MORAL COMPROMISES cM ee el ole 


9. THE ATTITUDE OF CHRISTIANITY TOWARD 
POLYGAMOUS CONVERTS ........ 

X. Serxr-Imposep HInpRANCES TO MISSIONS. . . 
1. MISSIONS A TEMPORARY PHENOMENON. . . 

. CHRISTIANITY’S ECCLESIASTICAL DIVISIONS . 

. AN EXCESSIVE RELIANCE ON ORGANIZATION 


g 
3 
4, THE CHRISTIAN USE OF MILITARY METAPHORS 
5. EMPHASIS ON NON-ESSENTIALS ... 

6 


. MISUNDERSTANDINGS OF CHRISTIAN TEACH- 
BIG sg Pets eds airy sia. wil ahah Spb okt ed Comte tal)\ ve! ve 


7. THE ESSENTIAL CHRISTIAN MESSAGE ... 


Xi 
PAGE 


83 
85 


87 
87 


88 
89 
89 


90 
90 
91 
92 


94 


96 
96 
98 
100 
101 
103 


104 
105 


XIV 


CONTENTS 


XI. Tue Artractive Power or CuristTIANITY. 


i 


ITS TEACHING REGARDING THE UNITY OF GOD 
ITS TEACHING OF FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD 


ITS PRESENTATION OF JESUS CHRIST AS THE 
SUPREME REVELATION OF GOD ..... 


THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE TOWARD IDOLATRY 
THE ARGUMENTS IN EXCUSE OF IDOLATRY. . 


CHRISTIANITY DELIVERS FROM FEAR... . 


PAGE 


. 107 
107 
108 


109 
110 
lll 
113 


ITS EXALTATION OF THE WORTH OF THE IN~- 


DIVIDUAL ° e « ° e e e e« e « es ad . e 


8. ITS NOBLE ETHICAL DEMANDS ..... .¢ 


9. ITS EXHIBIT OF THE CHRISTIAN HOME ... 


10. 


MM. 
12. 
13. 


ITS MESSAGE OF HOPE FOR THOSE WHO HAVE 
WATLAED 5 oh i0 ei c0 es yeiite sila fae Sec Ea te Ra 


ITS CALL TO REPENTANCE .....- «6. « 
ITS CONCEPTION OF LIFE ETERNAL... . 


ITS CONTRIBUTION TO NATIONAL REGENER- 
ATION ° ° e . . e . ° e e e . e . ° 


XII. Tur Prorer Tests or Missionary PRoGREss 


THE FALLACY OF NUMERICAL TESTS . . . . 
PITFALLS OF CONVERSION FIGURES .... 
THE CHRISTIAN TYPE OF FACE ...... 
NON-MISSIONARY CHRISTIAN ACHIEVEMENTS 
THE HEALING MINISTRY OF CHRISTIANITY. . 


ITS WORK OF EDUCATION A BULWARK AGAINST 
AGNOSTICISM AND ATHEISM ..... . 


THE GRADUAL CHRISTIANIZATION OF THE 
NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. ..... . 


CHRISTIANITY TRULY A WORLD RELIGION . 


115 
117 
118 


119 
120 
121 


121 


123 
123 
125 
126 
127 
127 


128 


130 
132 


CONTENTS 


XIII. Tue INDEBTEDNESS oF WESTERN CHRISTIANITY 
To MIssIONS . 


i 


2. 


11. 


16. 


WORLD EVANGELISM THE DISCHARGE OF A 
DBE Te eis ret hiebunety sil ay iw anarbitat ie 


THE SALUTARY REFLEX INFLUENCE OF MIS- 
SIONS ON THE MISSIONARY . 


THE SALUTARY REFLEX INFLUENCE OF MIS- 
SIONS, ON THE CHURCH) oi. iie) teeiee 


MISSIONS AS A FIELD FOR THE SPIRITUAL 
ENERGY AND CAPACITY OF WOMEN .. . 


MISSIONS AS ILLUMINATING THE BIBLE. . 
THE MEANING OF NAMES... . 


THE MORAL PROBLEMS OF A CHRISTIAN COM- 
RI INA irae shy taped mw iyeroy)) isan nat ANS an) aA) 8 hs dN (tT 


HUMAN) DEGRNERACY) oi i0)) 66 She ala ver evils 


LIGHT ON NEW TESTAMENT CHRISTIAN EX- 
MRR BON RE as ci aiine tin fateh ie iia) eit dy) oh ns 6) thay ol 


CHRISTIANITY AS THE FULFILMENT OF OTHER 
SMS TLGIIN Gh aoe’ dias eat av pes tie ey tet el ay tay 


THE MANY-SIDEDNESS OF CHRISTIANITY .. 


THE CONTRAST BETWEEN MODERN AND NEW 
TESTAMENT MISSIONARY ACTIVITY... . 


CHRISTIANITY AS A WAY OF LIFE .... . 
IT JUSTIFIES SUPREME SACRIFICES ... . 


IT OWES MUCH TO THE NEW INDIGENOUS 
RNEASY ita |) ren ol ae a ya bic, wah hel w Weave 


IT IS A GROWING WORLD FELLOWSHIP ... 


XIV. WoRrR.Lp-wipE CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP .... 


1. THE APPEAL OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS TO THE 


STUDENT LIFE OF OUR GENERATION... 


XV 
PAGE 


133 


133 


134 


136 


136 
137 
138 


139 
143 


144 


145 
147 


150 
152 
153 


154 
156 


158 


158 


XV1 CONTENTS 


2. THE REMARKABLE CONTRIBUTIONS MADE BY 
WOMEN MS ia als romney Sitio Snnl ete Bam etme 


3. THE UNUSED RESOURCES OF CHRISTIAN MEN 
4, THE IDEAL CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP .... 
5. THE FAMILY OF GOD KNOWS NO BARRIERS OF 

COLOR, RACE, STATUS, OR SECT ... . 


APPENDIX— 
I. GENERAL REFERENCE LITERATURE... . 


Il. REFERENCE LITERATURE FOR EACH CHAP- 


IiI. QUESTIONS SUGGESTED FOR GROUP DISCUS- 
SION OR FOR PRIVATE STUDY ..... 


PAGE 


159 
160 
161 


162 


167 
169 


174 


THE MISSIONARY IDEA IN LIFE 
AND RELIGION 


‘ 
Ls 


*4 
4 
vr 
ry 


Atha dt oe 4, 
1 eR Pe 


RAN) et aie 


5 





THE MISSIONARY IDEA IN LIFE 
AND RELIGION 


I 
THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE IN LIFE 


When the visitor from the West approaches the gate- 
way of the East the first printed words that meet his 
eye are “Dewar’s Whisky.” They appear as a sky 
sign above the mole at the entrance to the harbor at 
Port Said, as if symbolically claiming for whiskey the 
same dominion over the Orient it has so long exercised 
in certain portions of the West. 

When we speak of “missions”? and “missionaries”’ 
we instinctively think of the men and women who have 
gone out from Christian countries as ambassadors of 
the cross. The sky sign at Port Said, like the sewing- 
machine that one sees in every Indian bazaar, is a re- 
minder that it is not only enthusiasts for the message 
of Jesus that believe in missionary propaganda. At 
the very beginning of our study we come on a curious 
paradox. The very people who are whole-hearted sup- 
porters of the missionary ideal in the case of whiskey 
or the sewing-machine are in very many cases indiffer- 
ent or hostile to the missionary enterprise represented 
by the church. 


1. The Missionary Ideal in Religion a Minority Pro- 
gramme. 


In that section of the church which is responsible for 
its missionary programme, it is a commonplace that, to 
the church, expansion is the very breath of life; that 
not merely must every thought and ambition of the 

1 


2 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


individual be brought into subjection to Christ, not 
merely every sphere of social and national life, but 
every region of the world. Axiomatic as this truth 
seems to many, it has been widely challenged. Per- 
haps the most effective challenge lies in the fact that, 
speaking generally, the missionary ideal has never been 
the ideal of the church. The missionary programme is 
carried out by minorities, often small minorities, by 
special missionary societies, and by professional mis- 
sionaries; and in this the spread of Christianity is in 
sharp contrast to that of Mohammedanism. 

To students of Christian missions one of the puzzling 
phenomena is the attitude of Western laymen in the 
mission fields. Few who know the facts would quarrel 
with the estimate that that attitude includes a certain 
amount of active help, a moderate degree of benevo- 
lent interest, a large measure of indifference and ig- 
norance, and a certain admixture of hostility. An 
analysis of the critical position that so many European 
and American exiles take up toward the missionary 
work of the church in their neighborhood may be 
postponed. In the meantime we note that most of 
them are themselves missionaries. 


2. This Ideal in Other Spheres Quite Common. 


The only justification for the position the British 
have so long occupied in India is the fact that the 
members of the Civil Services have been political 
missionaries, convinced that they could govern India 
better than the Indians could govern themselves. The 
present political difficulties of the British in India are 
largely due to a decision made by them in the time of 
Lord Macaulay. The government of the day thought 
that the culture of the West was a richer and finer 
thing than the culture of the East; and believed that it 


THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE IN LIFE 3 


was therefore their duty to send out educational mis- 
sionaries to the schools and colleges of India. As a 
result of this decision, generation after generation of 
Indian youth, right down to our own day, has been 
taught the science, the philosophy, the economics, and 
the literature of the West. 

For the Indian pack-bullock we have substituted the 
bicycle, the railway train, and the motor-car. Indian 
forest paths or trackless jungles have, under European 
engineers, given way to a magnificent system of roads. 
Western factories have largely replaced the hand looms 
at the same time that cotton piece-goods from the West 
were largely replacing the products of these hand 
looms. We have taught young India to play lawn 
tennis, cricket, football, and ground hockey; in some 
cases to play them superbly well. Indians conduct 
their anti-British propaganda largely in the English 
language, which the British have taught them, and 
through newspapers conducted on Western models 
and published under Western conceptions of the lib- 
erty of the press. They reach their political meetings 
on Western railroads or by Western automobiles. The 
very ideal they have in view, self-government under 
representative institutions, is a Western ideal. 

The diseases that take such an appalling toll of In- 
dian life are largely Oriental; the methods of fighting 
them, in so far as they are effective, are largely im- 
ported from the West. India’s famines have seemed to 
be part of her destiny. It was left to Britain to show 
how even a famine, affecting hundreds of thousands of 
square miles and scores of millions of people, could be 
fought with the loss of hardly a single life. It seems 
safe to say that no country, entrusted with the des- 
tinies of another, has a finer record of achievement to 
show than the British Government in India in its long 


a THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


struggle with India’s ever-recurring famines. If Britain 
has not succeeded in ending the appalling mortality 
from malarial fever, cholera, and plague, her medical 
men have at least shown how, if the people heartily 
co-operated and if sufficient funds were available, the 
death roll might be materially reduced and some of the 
worst epidemic scourges might be shorn of their terrors. 

By the work of British engineers deserts have been 
turned into gardens, and districts which formerly col- 
lapsed at the first breath of famine have become gran- 
aries whose superfluity in hard times helps to make up 
for the deficiency of less favored tracts. 

Western physicians, administrators, educational ex- 
perts, and engineers who work elsewhere than in the 
West are all missionaries. By their very presence in 
the countries to which they go they say in effect: “Our 
ways are better than yours. We do not doubt you 
could go in your old ways, but we do not wish to see 
you do so. We bring you light that we think you need.” 


3. Wise Administrators Uphold Moral and Religious 
Ideals. 


Again, all British administrators in India, and yet 
more British magistrates, are missionaries of a moral 
ideal, the ideal of absolute justice between man and 
man. One has seen an Indian play, written by an In- 
dian and acted by Indians, of which the moral was that 
every person concerned, from the presiding magistrate 
down to the court janitor, had been bribed. It has been 
generally recognized that Britain has stood for the 
principle that in the law courts truth must prevail, 
irrespective of the caste or the social position of the 
parties concerned. 

Not only so, but the task of the administrator in 
India, in one important aspect of it, is a religious mis- 


THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE IN LIFE 5 


sion. In dealing with those epidemic diseases that 
periodically decimate whole districts, or with those 
agricultural disasters that so often blight the hopes of 
the farmers, it is more than half the battle to change 
the theological orientation of the people, to induce them 
to cease the despairing cry, “It is the will of God,” 
with which Hindu and Mahommedan alike are so fond 
of justifying their resignation to adverse circumstances. 


4. ItIs not Only Christian Ideals That Arouse Opposi- 
tion. 

Nor can the missionaries of administration, of edu- 
cation, of sanitation, of irrigation, adopt the plea that 
the benefits they confer are obvious while the useful 
achievements of Christian missions are disputable. In 
recent years by far the most influential of all the anti- 
British leaders in India has been Mr. Gandhi. His 
fight is not altogether against British rule, hardly at 
all against Christian missions. To him the enemy is 
modern civilization; the work of the missionaries of 
Western ideals in law, medicine, engineering, and in- 
dustry. Railways bring together places that God 
meant to be separate. Lawyers are parasites who bat- 
ten on the foibles of their fellows. If men were left to 
endure the results of excess, they would mend their 
ways; as it is, they go to the doctor, who patches them 
up, so that they can return like the dog to its vomit. 
Hand industry must undo the injury that factories and 
steam power have wrought. What the cross is to the 
Christian, that the spinning-wheel is to the tee 
hatma.” 


5. Truth Is Something to be Shared. 


We have chosen the work of the British in India as 
one of the most obvious exemplifications of the mis- 


6 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


sionary attitude to life; but it is only one illustration 
out of many that would strike us more forcibly were 
we not so familiar with them. The work done in Ger- 
many in the spread of nationalist ideals, the foreign 
propaganda of the Russian Soviets, and the educational 
activities of the labor parties of Europe and America 
are even more familiar examples of an intense desire on 
the part of large groups for converts to new ideas, and 
of the success with which such missionary movements 
can be conducted if there is sufficient enthusiasm be- 
hind them. Nor is it necessary to take such large-scale 
illustrations of the thesis that, just as we are all social- 
ists nowadays, so we are all missionaries. Every au- 
thor who publishes a book, every inventor who takes 
out a patent, the explorer who describes his travels, the 
man of science who announces his discoveries, the 
journal of every society for the advancement of any 
branch of knowledge, bears testimony to the general 
belief that truth is meant to be shared. 


6. Is Religion an Exception ? 


Is it, then, we are led to ask, something peculiar in 
the nature of religious truth that makes inapplicable 
in this sphere the general desire to share with all man- 
kind the best we have? One has heard a large audience 
of Hindus cheer to the echo a statement of Mrs. Annie 
Besant that the Hindus have never proselytized. Is 
there any other subject than religion in connection with 
which the expression of such a sentiment would have 
called forth such a response? One need not stop to in- 
quire how far the self-contained character of Hindu- 
ism is connected with the caste system and its petri- 
faction of existing relations, how far with the pessim- 
ism that long ago settled on Hindu thought. It is at 
least true that Hinduism to-day shows no sign of spread- 


THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE IN LIFE 7 


ing, or of any desire to spread, beyond the confines of 
India; though in the past it has shown a wonderful 
power of absorption within India, having in fact driven 
out all rivals except monotheistic religions. But if Hin- 
duism, like Confucianism, seems peculiarly adapted to 
be a national religion, and ill adapted to spread far 
beyond its own borders, Judaism, Mohammedanism, 
and Buddhism have not merely cherished the ambition, 
but have at times shown an astonishing capacity, to 
widen the geographical area of their influence. 

On a broad view, then, of the attitude of leaders of 
thought and action to nations other than their own, it 
is not the Christian missionary who is put on his de- 
fence, but the man who looks askance at the missionary 
activities of the church. If the church did not send 
ambassadors to all the world, the obvious inference 
would be that in her belief in her message, in her en- 
thusiasm for the cause she stands for, she falls far below, 
not only the devotees of the most spiritual of the non- 
Christian religions, but even the most serious students 
of science, art, and literature, the most earnest repre- 
sentatives of education, commerce, industry, and poli- 
tics. The only religion that has ever vindicated its 
claim to be a world religion needs no apology for ful- 
filling its vocation. : 


“ 


If 
THE MISSIONARY IDEA IN THE GOSPELS 


1. The New Testament a Volume of Musson 
Literature. 


The missionary idea was inseparably bound up with 
the Christian religion from the very beginning. So far 
as we can see, had the propagating of the “good news” 
not been felt from the first as an urgent duty, not 

only would there have been no Christian church, but, 
granted the existence of a church, it would have had 
no New Testament. The Synoptic Gospels are obvi- 
ously, in part at least, the result of missionary preach- 
ing and teaching, and include instruction given to 
catechumens. The Acts of the Apostles is a record of 
the early expansion of the church, in particular of the 
missionary activities of Paul. Paul’s epistles are the 
letters of a missionary to his converts and other mem- 
bers of the young churches, dealing with the problems, 
theoretical and practical, that arise where Christians 
are facing an untried situation. Some of the difficulties 
that arose, for example, in the church of Corinth were 
just those with which the missionary of to-day has to 
deal. Among them were problems connected with the 
marriage relation and with customs that involved idola- — 
try; with the machinery for settling contested claims 
and for preserving the Christian standard of conduct; 
with the nature and use of spiritual endowments and 
the intelligent and reverent celebration of the Lord’s 
Supper. It is hardly too much to say that from begin- 
ning to end the New Testament is a volume of mis- 
sionary literature. 

8 


IN THE GOSPELS 9 


2. Jesus an Indefatigable Missionary. 


Our Lord never thought of Himself as a teacher with 
instruction to impart to any one who might care to 
listen. He had an urgent message from Ged, a message 
_which he must at all costs deliver, not only to eager 
hearers but also to the lukewarm and the indifferent. , 
So vital were the issues that hung on men’s acceptance 
of it, that, to bring it home to them, he endured hunger, 
weariness, and peril. He “evangelized”’ the towns and 
villages of Galilee. Mark speaks of work on, and per- 
haps beyond, the northern boundary of Galilee, and 
represents Jesus as making the last journey to Jerusalem 
through Persea to the east of the Jordan. The Fourth 
Gospel has the conversation of Jesus with the woman of 
Samaria, and Luke hints at a thwarted mission to the 
Samaritans on the final journey to Jerusalem. Much of 
the Fourth Gospel is occupied with the record of Jesus’ 
visits to Judea, on which until recently the Synoptic 
‘Gospels were believed to be silent. But as‘ the critical 
study of the records proceeds, it is becoming clearer that 
even the Synoptic Gospels imply a ministry to Judea 
far longer and more effective than was formerly sup- 
posed. 


3. Jesus’ Attitude to the Gentile World. 


The question has sometimes been seriously raised 
whether Jesus thought of himself as inaugurating a 
world mission or even a Gentile mission. We have to 
grant that on this point the records are not quite so 
clear as might have been desired, and that our knowl- 
edge of Jesus’ attitude to the Gentile world is largely a 
matter of inference. There is, however, such a thing as 
inference that amounts to certainty. It is hardly credible 
that one who knew and loved the Old Testament as 


10 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


Jesus did, who had such an unerring and discriminating 
intuition for its spiritual message at its loftiest levels, 
should on this subject have had a more restricted vision 
than some of the Old Testament seers. 

Jesus knew the story of Nineveh, the great heathen 
city that repented at the preaching of the reluctant 
Jonah. He must have read the idyll of Ruth. “Ruth is 
a Moabitess, and the book sweetly urges that such 
a woman as she, with her loving heart and her resolve 
to take Israel’s God for her God (1: 16), is an Israelite 
indeed, and ought to be gladly given her place within 
the community of Jehovah worshippers.” ! The begin- 
ning of the second chapter of Isaiah may have been in . 
the mind of Jesus when he sought to cleanse the Temple 
and make it once more God’s house of prayer. “It 
shall come to pass in the latter days, that the mountain 
of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the 
mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and 
all nations shall flow unto it. And many peoples shall 
go and say, Come ye and let us go up to the mountain 
of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he 
will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths; 
for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of 
the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge between 
the nations, and shall reprove many peoples: and they 
shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their 
spears into pruninghooks.” 

That the selection of the sayings of Jesus and the 
incidents of his ministry preserved in our Gospels was 
influenced by the problems that faced the early church 
is not merely probable in itself, but seems to be borne 
out by a study of the facts. It seems certain that, in 
the sharp controversy between those who thought of 
the gospel as for Jews only, and those who believed 

1J. E. McFadyen, Interest of the Bible, p. 109. 


IN THE GOSPELS 11 


that the church had a world mission, every word and 
action of Jesus that bore on the question would be cher- 
ished and recorded. Exponents of the orthodox Jewish 
Christian view would point to the small place occupied 
in the story by any ministry beyond the confines of 
Palestine, to Jesus’ apparent unwillingness to accede to 
the petition of the Syrophenician woman, and to the 
injunction to the Twelve to confine the proclamation 
strictly to Jews, avoiding not only the Gentiles but 
even the Samaritans. 


4. “To the Jew First.” 


However universal our Lord’s message may have 
been in essence, yet, in the form in which he clothed it, 
especially perhaps in the earlier days of his ministry, 
if it would not have been unintelligible to Gentiles, at 
least it would have needed interpreting to them as it 
did not to the Jews. At every turn, in his own nation, 
he had points of attachment for his teaching. A people 
nurtured on the Old Testament might stand in need of 
instruction about the Kingdom of God, but they needed 
no definition, and apparently they received none. The 
beatitudes are expressed almost entirely in Old Testa- 
ment language. Some of Jesus’ thoughts on ethics are 
set against the background of Mosaic prescription or 
Pharisaic practice. 

Opinions may differ as to the extent to which Jesus’ 
conception of his mission, and the general purport of 
his teaching, were influenced by the expectation that 
the world in its existing form was about to pass away; 
but it seems fairly clear that the thought of an imminent 
judgment, based on Jewish eschatological expectations, 
colored at least the language in which he conveyed his 
message. All this helps to explain why, as a matter of 
practical procedure, the gospel should be proclaimed 


12 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


not to the Jew exclusively, but to “the Jew first,”’ to 
a prepared people. 


5. Jesus’ Anti-Gentile Bias Only Apparent. 

The words forbidding the Twelve to approach Gen- 
tiles or Samaritans occur only in Matthew’s Gospel, 
which seems in places to be colored by the feeling of the 
Jewish Christian section of the church. They occur 
moreover in a section of that Gospel which is wrapped 
in some obscurity (Matthew 10). Jesus apparently be- 
lieved that a crisis in the mission had arisen, and that 
there was urgent need for haste. (See v. 23: Ye shall 
not have gone through the cities of Israel, till the Son 
of Man be come.) There is no real ground for supposing 
that there was even momentarily an anti-Gentile or 
anti-Samaritan bias. 

In the story of the Syrophenician woman, the words 
ascribed to Jesus in the King James version, “I am 
not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel” 
(Matthew 15 : 24), are thus translated by Cureton from 
the famous Syriac manuscript which he discovered : 
“T am not sent but after those flocks which have 
strayed from the house of Israel.’’ In verse 26 it has 
been suggested that what Jesus actually said was, “It 
is not seemly to take the bread which the sons fling to 
the dogs”? (which may be a reference to a popular 
proverb warning against begging), a somewhat bitter 
saying called forth by the readiness of a Gentile to re- 
ceive him when his own people were rejecting him. 
Even on the ordinary reading, the story may reflect 
a grave struggle taking place in Jesus’ own mind, a 
reconsideration of the whole question of confining his 
work to the unresponsive people of Palestine, when there 
were so many in the wider world that would hear him 
gladly. ; 


IN THE GOSPELS Ba 4 


6. Jesus’ Real Attitude Shown in His Ministry. 


We get the real attitude of Jesus, not by looking at 
this or that word, the bearing of which, owing to the 
scantiness of the record, may be imperfectly under- 
stood; but by standing back and looking at, the whole 
impression made by a study of his ministry.’ It was an 
age of barriers, of social, racial, and religious exclusive- 
ness; an age in which Romans and Greeks despised 
barbarians, when Jews thought Gentiles outside the 
pale and had no dealings with Samaritans; when foods 
and people alike were divided into “clean” and “un- 
clean’’; when the Pharisee thanked God that he was not 
like the tax-gatherer, and men marvelled if a religious 
teacher were seen talking with a woman. Jesus showed 
himself not so much triumphant over, as oblivious of, 
these distinctions. In his presence all adventitious 
trappings fell off, and men and women stood revealed 
as the men and women that they were. 

The spell of the parables lies partly in this, that in 
them there is so little that is temporal and local. The 
sower was a farmer, not specifically a Palestinian 
farmer. Who ever thinks of the father of the prodigal 
as a Jew? In the parable of the Good Samaritan, it is 
one of the points that we know nothing of the race, 
religion or social status of the victim of the robbers, 
and the selection of a Samaritan as the hero of the 
story was a challenge to Jewish religious pride. Jesus 
loved the Old Testament stories such as that of Naa- 
man, of the widow of Zarephath, of the Queen of 
Sheba and the repentant Ninevites, that tell of a great 
human brotherhood that ignores the fences with which 
men seek to shut off others from themselves, fences 
which they fondly hope represent something in the 
mind of God. We are only now learning something of 


14 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


that spirit which Jesus showed in contact with those 
of other races and other faiths. There was never a 
suggestion of proselytizing, of contempt, of emphasis on 
the things that separated them from his people. He 
met them, not as outsiders, but as children of the com- 
mon Father, and recognized to the full every response 
they made to the Father’s leading. 


7. The Resurrection Missionary Commission. 


Many have felt doubts about the commission given, 
according to Matthew’s Gospel (28:19), by the risen 
Jesus to the Eleven to “go and make disciples of all 
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and 
of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”’ The possibility of 
the literal historical accuracy of such verbal instruc- 
tions will depend on the nature of the resurrection 
appearances of Jesus; a subject on which the New Testa- 
ment references, and even the Gospel accounts of the 
resurrection manifestations, leave room for a variety 
of views. 

On any theory, the commission is surely a correct 
interpretation of the whole attitude of Jesus to men. 
One of the most characteristic words of Jesus is that in 
which he pictures God as the most hospitable of hosts, 
keeping open door and applying to candidates for ad- 
mission to his great feast none of those purblind tests 
with which men restrict the circle of their friends. The 
different versions of the parable of the great supper 
(Matthew 22:1-10; Luke 14: 15-24) suggest that 
early Christian preachers may have adapted the story 
to suit different circumstances. But the picture of the 
host who would have his table full, whatever boorish- 
ness the invited guests might show, bears the unmis- 
takable impress of the artist who saw into the mind of 
God as no other has done. Even if, in Luke’s judgment, 


IN THE GOSPELS 15 


the prodigal, for whose return the father waited with 
anxious longing, represented only the tax-gatherers and 
“sinners” of Palestine—and it is by no means certain 
that that is his judgment—it is a narrow interpretation 
that does less than justice to the wonderful story. 


Til 


THE MISSIONARY IDEA IN THE APOSTOLIC 
CHURCH 


The story of the early history of the church is 
wrapped in considerable obscurity; but several pertinent 
facts seem to stand out clearly. 


1. Early Missionary Activity. 

In the very first years after the crucifixion, there 
must have been a wide-spread and successful missionary 
activity among the followers of Jesus. Paul’s persecu- 
tion of the Christians, which may have followed the 
death of Jesus at a very short interval, could have 
shown the virulence it did, only if the Christians were 
growing in numbers and in influence and seemed likely 
to become a real menace to the Jewish faith. We hear 
of Christians at Damascus; we can only guess how they 
came to be there. At a later time we know there were 
Christians in Rome, long before Paul wrote to them; 
we know nothing of how the gospel reached Rome. 
The vague hints which are our only source of informa- 
tion suggest that the first rapid and remarkable spread 
of the “good news’”’ depended largely on unknown indi- 
vidual Christians, often fleeing from persecution, each 
of them an unofficial, sometimes doubtless almost an 
unconscious, missionary. 


2. The Controversy Over the Reception of Gentile 
Converts. 
At a comparatively early date the church was sharply 
divided on the question whether the Christian religion 
16 


IN THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH 17 


was simply a reformed Judaism, in which the only dis- 
tinctively new note was that Jesus was the Messiah, 
or whether it had altogether burst the bonds of Judaism, 
and was now to be a world religion, offering salvation 
to all without restriction of race. The fact that such a 
controversy should have arisen, and that among the 
chief exponents of the broader view were Paul and 
others who had not known Jesus during his lifetime, is 
one of the greatest difficulties in the way of accepting 
the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s Gospel 
as a message actually spoken to the disciples by the 
risen Jesus. 

Perhaps the simplest explanation is that, while the 
world scope of the “good news,” as Jesus understood 
it, was implicit in his life and teaching, he seldom or 
never made it explicit, in a form which the spiritually 
obtuse could not misunderstand. The variety in the 
conceptions of his mission held even by his intimate 
friends is hardly more surprising than the small mi- 
nority of his professed followers who, after nineteen 
centuries of Christian triumph, have any interest in the 
world mission of the church. 

Strictly speaking, this was not the form in which 
the controversy arose. Judaism too had its missionary 
propaganda, sometimes apparently of a particularly 
zealous quality; it had won striking successes in far dis- 
tant parts of the world. Philo tells us that there were 
a million Jews in Egypt alone. Besides the proselytes 
who accepted the full yoke of the law, but who could 
never in their own lifetime become full Jews, there was 
the much larger outer circle known as “the God- 
fearers,” the men who were attracted by the loftiness 
of the Jewish conception of God, and the purity of 
Jewish faith and ethic, but who either had scruples 
about certain articles in the ceremonial law, or, like so 


18 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


many converts in modern mission fields, were unwilling 
to pay the price of social and religious separation from 
their own people. 

That the gospel should be preached to Gentiles was 
in itself, for those who inherited the Jewish tradition, 
no startling innovation; the Jews had their own mis- 
sionary propaganda. But that even a “God-fearer” 
like Cornelius should, as soon as he believed, receive 
the Holy Spirit, be baptized, and be entitled to full 
membership in the religious community, this was in- 
deed a new thing in Israel. It was round this subject, 
rather than on the mere right to evangelize Gentiles, 
that the controversy arose. The question was whether 
a non-Jew, on becoming a Christian, inherited all the 
obligations of the Jewish law. A religion which had for 
its only gateway, in the case of men, the degrading 
ceremony of circumcision, and whose votaries were 
prevented by certain food tabus from eating with men 
of other faiths, could never aspire to be a world religion. 
From the day when the church recognized that “also 
to the Gentiles has God granted the repentance that 
brings life” the universal mission of Christianity be- 
came a practicable ideal. 


3- The Men Who Delivered Christianity from Judaism. 


The assertion has been made, and significance has 
been attached to it, that, to begin with at least, the 
Gentile mission was conducted by leaders who had not 
belonged to the disciple circle, and who, so far as we 
know, had not come into contact with Jesus during his 
lifetime. It is claimed that our records show that the 
first enthusiasts for the world mission of Christianity 
were men like Stephen, Philip, and Paul rather than 
Peter and John. The suggestion has been made that 
this explains why, during an early persecution, the 


IN THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH 19 


apostles were able to remain unmolested in Jerusa- 
lem, while the other Christian leaders had to flee (Acts 
8:1). They confined their mission to the Jews, and 
still thought of themselves and were regarded by others 
as Jews, albeit with an important difference; and so 
could, after the first temporary outbreak of opposition, 
go about their mission as they conceived it, without 
hindrance; whereas the Hellenist Christians, frankly ig- 
noring the racial barriers erected by the Jews, were 
recognized by them as enemies of the faith, to be 
crushed by them at all costs—if need be, to be extermi- 
nated. 

This seems a large deduction to draw from the very 
meagre evidence at our disposal.! Whatever the motive 
that inspired the composition of the Acts of the Apos- 
tles, it was certainly not written to give a full account 
of the early days of the church. It was not unnatural 
that Jews of the Dispersion, when they became Chris- 
tians, should be quicker to recognize the emancipating 
element in the religion of Jesus than the Jews of Pales- 
tine. But, as we have seen, the controversy that nearly 
split the infant church in two was not on the question 
of the right or duty of preaching to the Gentiles, but on 
the terms on which Gentile Christians could be received 
into the church. 

In Paul’s first-hand account of the dispute in the 
Epistle to the Galatians, he tells us that the “pillar 
apostles’? readily consented that Paul and Barnabas 
should conduct a mission to the uncircumcised. In this 
epistle Peter is accused, not of a narrow religious out- 
lock, but of timidity, of a sort of “‘two-facedness.”’ 
Whatever the details of the controversy, the victory 


1In Saint Paul and the Jerusalem Church, p. 45, Wilfrid) Knox suggests that the 
apostles were personally unknown to the Hellenists who conducted the persecution 
and so remained unrecognized. 


20 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


was complete for the party that maintained that the 
_ gospel was for mankind, without let or limitation. In 
the later books of the New Testament, the echoes of 
the once keen discussion have died away. No reader 
of the Epistle to the Hebrews, for example, from a 
perusal of it alone, could guess that the question of 
the admission of Gentile Christians to the church had 
ever been raised. 


4. Christianity’s Complete Delocalization. 


The divorce of Christianity from Judaism was im- 
portant in more ways than one. One secret of the 
strength of the early Christian movement was just 
that, while the Christian leaders seem to have been 
anxious, as far as possible, to preserve correct relations 
with the state, yet the Christians had now a wider 
loyalty than to any terrestrial state. It was to the 
heavenly Jerusalem, not the earthly, that the Chris- 
tians looked. According to the Acts of the Apostles, 
the leaders of the Jerusalem church in the early days 
tended to claim for Jerusalem the same authoritative 
place in the Christian church it had so long held in the 
Jewish. 

The destruction of Jerusalem was no unmixed catas- 
trophe even for the Jews, since they learned once more 
one of the lessons of the exile—that their religion could 
flourish apart from the Temple and the sacred city. 
For the Christians, however, the danger of localized 
views of God, and of a localized concentration of re- 
ligious authority, was, for the time being at least, over 
long before the year 70. While there was from the 
beginning one Christian Church, yet from their founda- 
tion the Pauline churches were encouraged to live each 
its own independent life. 


IN THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH 21 


5. Why Were the New Testament Churches not 
Urged to Evangelize? 

Each new church founded would then become a new 
centre of missionary activity. In view of this fact, it is 
surprising that we hardly ever find in the epistles of the 
New Testament an appeal to the readers to evangelize 
their non-Christian neighbors, an appeal such as the 
missionaries of to-day constantly make to the mission 
churches. It is not quite easy to see the significance of 
this. The belief in the imminent end of the world must 
have made any such aim as “the evangelization of the 
world in this generation’? seem almost chimerical. 
There may have been the feeling too that the work of 
winning converts was the preserve of the apostles and 
-of the recognized or even ordained leaders, like Paul 
and Barnabas. Paul does not write to the Christians 
of Corinth as if he thought them fit to instruct others; 
and the recipients of the Epistle to the Hebrews are 
frankly told that, while men who have been so long 
in the church ought to be ready to teach, in fact they 
are themselves at the milk diet stage. 

Yet the church leaders knew that the good news 
spreads in other ways than by formal instruction from 
official teachers. Thus, in I Peter, Christian women 
are reminded that men who refuse to listen to preach- 
ing, may, without a word of teaching, be won over by 
the chaste, reverent, submissive lives of their wives. 
The extraordinarily rapid spread of the gospel in the 
early days was God’s own commentary on Jesus’ para- 
bles of life and growth, that had become part of the 
heritage of the churches. 


22 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


6. The New Testament Gospel Essentially a Uni- 
versal Message. 


We may sum up our study of the missionary idea in 
the New Testament in the statement that the concep- 
tion of the Christian church as a body of people who 
know a number of comforting truths, truths which they 
are under no obligation to share with others, wherever 
such a conception came from, is quite foreign to the 
New Testament. The gospel, which is the message of 
the New Testament, 1s typified by the leaven of the 
parable, a power which by its very nature spreads 
irresistibly and subdues to itself all that it touches. 
Within a generation of the crucifixion “‘Go ye into-all 
the world”? was universally recognized as a true inter- 
pretation of the mind of Christ. , 


IV 


THE MISSIONARY IDEA IN THE HISTORY OF 
THE CHURCH 


1. The Early History of Missions Generally Un- 
familiar. 


Even among people who have made some study of 
the missionary enterprise, there is often an impression 
that the movement which began with Carey at the end 
of the eighteenth century was a completely new de- 
parture. A little reflection would show that this could 
not have been the case. Even the East India Company 
in its early years allowed, or even encouraged, its 
chaplains to take an interest in the religious welfare of 
the Indians with whom they came into contact. 

For this general ignorance of the history of missions 
prior to the nineteenth century, there are several 
reasons. We like to associate the spread of the gospel 
with the names of great missionaries; but in the early 
centuries the pioneer work of the church was done 
largely by simple men and women who have left no 
traces. Of hardly one missionary of the second century, 
for example, do we know even the name. For various 
reasons much of the ground once won in Africa, in the 
Near East, and the Far East was afterward lost and 
had to be regained; so that there are long gaps in the 
history. 

In the Protestant Church the period for two centur- 
ies after the Reformation was largely barren of mis- 
sionary effort. In the Middle Ages, and down almost 
to our own day, many of the most devoted, heroic, and 

23 


24, THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


successful missionaries were members of the Roman 
brotherhoods, the story of whose achievements is largely 
unknown in Protestant circles, save to experts. The 
elements of truth in the common idea that missions 
began to be in the nineteenth century are that during 
the last century the church has recognized its mission 
of world evangelization with a new enthusiasm, per- 
sistence, and thoroughness; and that world conditions 
have made possible, as never before, the fulfilment 
within a measurable time of the ideal of the preaching 
of the gospel to all the world. 


2. Factors in the Rapid Spread of the Early Church. 


Harnack, after a careful study of the question, agrees 
that, in the early centuries, Christianity spread with 
inconceivable rapidity. This statement is not incon- 
sistent with the fact that, for some generations, tested 
by numerical standards, the church made no imposing 
display. In the nature of the case its advance in num- 
ber of adherents must have tended to take the form of 
a geometrical progression, in which kind of series the 
smallness of the earlier numbers is always deceptive. 
In the first Christian generations the spread of the 
gospel was largely the work of men like Paul who had 
been specially set apart as missionaries. Presumably 
to some extent from the beginning, certainly in large 
measure before long, the leavening agency was the 
church itself, the church as a brotherhood, and the 
men and women who made up its membership. 

The Christians won adherents for the faith not only 
by their public and private proclamation of their 
allegiance to Jesus. They persuaded men by the lives 
they lived and the deaths they died—women as well 
as men—by the purity of their morals, and by the lively 
and self-sacrificing interest they had in each other’s 


é 


IN THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH 25 


welfare, as shown in the unstinted and fearless help they 
gave in trouble, in persecution, in imprisonment, and 
in times of epidemic disease. The unanimous witness 
of the church was itself a powerful testimony to the 
faith. In the early centuries the church in an astonish- 
ing way rose to the vocation which Jesus had marked 
out for her of being the salt of the earth and the light 
of the world. 

Then, as now, what distinguished the Christian faith 
from any mere philosophy or system of ethics was that 
it gave people power to be what all good men and wo- 
men wish to be. The church in those days fulfilled its 
mission, largely because its members knew the price 
that had to be paid and were willing to pay it. The 
distinction between the church and the world was far 
more clear-cut than it is in the Western world to-day; 
and Christians realized that, if the faith was not to 
perish, they must come out and be separate, whatever 
it might cost them. 


3. Some Historical Data. 

In the age preceding Constantine, Asia Minor was 
the outstanding Christian country. Palestine as a 
whole, and especially the Jewish element in it, steadily 
resisted attempts at Christianization. Armenia was 
officially Christian before the Roman Empire became 
nominally Christian. Harnack calculates that there 
were at least thirty thousand Christians in Rome be- 
fore the middle of the third century. By the end of the 
third century Christianity was diffused throughout 
Spain. The magnitude of the church in North Africa 
may be gauged by the fact that, by the beginning of 
the fourth century, there may have been as many as 
two hundred and fifty bishops in that region, a number 
which seems to have been multiplied by two or three 


260M THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


during that century. Britain may have had missionary 
work before the end of the second century, though it 
was not really Christianized until the fourth. 

In the fourth century Constantine paid tribute to 
the preeminent position Christianity had attained by, 
in effect, making it the official religion of the empire. 
Thenceforward for some centuries the main missionary 
task of the church, a work in which the Irish churches 
took a distinguished part, was the conversion of 
Europe. Christendom suffered heavy losses from Mo- 
hammedanism, which began its militant career early 
in the seventh century. Mohammed’s knowledge of the 
Christian religion, however perverted the form of it 
which he knew, is one of various indications that Chris- 
tianity was wide-spread in Arabia by the year 600; 
but it was completely rooted out of the country by the 
advance of Mohammedanism. The complete extirpa- 
tion of Christianity from North Africa, which had 
played so prominent a part in the earlier history of the 
church, is one of the saddest stories in the history of the 
Christian faith. 

The crusading centuries, whatever they may have 
accomplished for Christianity in other ways, did little 
to extend the borders of Christendom. Missionary 
history from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century 
is largely the story of the labors, often the heroic labors, 
of the Dominicans, Franciscans, and Jesuits, particu- 
larly in the New World. The outburst of missionary 
activity that began in the Protestant Church at the 
end of the eighteenth century is reminiscent of the 
first age in its enthusiasm, and far exceeds the first age 
in the completeness of the organization involved, the 
variety of the methods employed, and the extent of 
territory covered. 


IN THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH 27 


4. Christianity in the Far East. 


A severe persecution of Christians of the Persian 
Empire took place in 343. There is evidence for the 
existence of Christian churches in India in the sixth 
century and possibly long before; and there has appar- 
ently been a Christian church in India through all the 
centuries since. There is some reason to believe that 
the form of Buddhism which prevailed in China was 
due to very early Christian influence. After the banish- 
ment of Nestorius in the early fifth century by the 
Council of Ephesus, his followers spread over a large 
part of Central Asia, carrying their faith with them. 
Cabul and Peking, among other places, became head- 
quarters of ecclesiastical districts. 

A Jesuit mission which reached China before the end 
of the sixteenth century found few traces of the Nes- 
torian or of the later Franciscan mission, and the work 
had to be begun again. It is claimed that in 1669 there 
were over three hundred thousand baptized Christians, 
though the number steadily declined in the eighteenth 
century. 

As a result of the labors of Juan Fernandez, Francis 
Xavier, and others, there were hundreds of thousands 
of Christians in Japan before the end of the sixteenth 
century. Later, largely as the result of horrible perse- 
cutions, Christianity was practically exterminated in 
that country. 


5. Objectionable Missionary Methods. 


All down through the centuries the work of extend- 
ing the borders of the church was conducted with vary- 
ing motives and by widely differing methods. From 
the fourth century down almost to our own day, the 
use of political power was very generally believed to be 


28 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


a legitimate missionary weapon, while physical force 
played a large part in the conversion of Europe. Ray- 
mond Lull, the first missionary to the Mohammedans, 
was an honorable exception to the belief in the employ- 
ment of this method, the use of which was due in part 
to the influence of Augustine, who advocated the death 
penalty for those who refused to accept the Christian 
faith. In the sixteenth century, to aid him in his work 
in India, Xavier obtained from the King of Portugal 
power to punish by death the makers of idols. 

Missionaries have sometimes tried to simplify their 
task by the offer of material inducements. It is a little 
disconcerting to read in an extract from the diary of a 
certain Van Riebeek, written at Cape Town in 1658: 
“To stimulate the slaves to attention while at school, 
and to induce them to learn the Christian prayers, they 
were promised each a glass of brandy and two inches of 
tobacco when they finish their task.” ! In the last 
decade of the last century in the Chota Nagpur district 
of India many converts of the Lutheran mission and of 
the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel were in- 
duced to join the Roman Catholic Church by the offer 
of loans, which were to be regarded as gifts so long as 
they remained Catholics. 


6. The Comparative Unimportance of Methods. 


The history of missions suggests that the modern 
emphasis on method somewhat exaggerates its im- 
portance. Historically, the particular door by which 
converts enter the church seems to be a matter of less 
moment than the training given to them and especially 
to their children when they have entered,” For example, 
toward the end of the eighth century Charlemagne 
completed the Christianization of the Frankish Empire 

1 Robinson, History of Christian Missions, p. 19. 


IN THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH 29 


by a protracted and bloody conquest of the Saxons in 
the northeast corner of the empire, and by the whole- 
sale deportation of irreconcilables. Yet, when once 
the broken Saxons had accepted Christianity, they be- 
came among the stanchest Christians of the German 
tribes and were a great strength to the work of the 
Reformation. The destruction of the flourishing Chris- 
tian Church in Japan in the sixteenth century does not 
seem to have been due primarily to Xavier’s custom of 
baptizing people who understood only imperfectly 
what Christianity meant. Nor was it altogether due to 
persecution; or rather, the Christians were persecuted, 
not as Christians, but because the Japanese Christians 
became involved in politics through a Japanese military 
dictator playing them off against his Buddhist enemies, 
and because the dependence of the Japanese churches 
on a foreign pope aroused Japanese suspicion. 

Again, the rapid diminution of the number of nomi- 
nal Christians in Ceylon which took place after the 
British introduced religious toleration at the end of the 
eighteenth century seems to have been due primarily, 
neither to the forcible methods of conversion used by 
the Roman Catholics in the sixteenth century, nor to 
the prohibition of the Roman Catholic rites on pain of 
death decreed by the Dutch, when they expelled the 
Portuguese in the middle of the seventeenth century, 
but rather to the ignorance in which the converts were 
for the most part left.. However this may be, the Chris- 
tian conscience of our day is in accord with the true 
genius of Christianity in its strong feeling that only a 
voluntary and intelligent acceptance of the Christian 
faith has any religious value, and that even absolutely 
voluntary mass movements into the church may be 
a source of real danger, unless the converts can receive 
adequate instruction in Christian faith and ethics. 


30 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


7. The Method of the Unjust Steward. 


To a certain type of mind at some periods in the 
history of the church, a more insidious danger has been 
the temptation to resort to that subtle form of bribery 
which consists in lowering the ethical claims of the gos- 
pel. If, before the close of the third century, Chris- 
tianity smoothed its path by accepting a cultus of 
saints and angels that was hardly distinguishable from 
worship, and sanctioning the use of relics as instruments 
of miracle, a great price had to be paid in later ages in 
the debased forms of the Christian religion that so 
widely prevailed.’ At the beginning of the seventeenth 
century, Robert di Nobili, an Italian Jesuit, introduced 
the custom, which most Roman Catholic missionaries, 
at least in South India, have since retained, of allowing 
converts to keep in the church the caste they had as 
Hindus. By this device he thought to evade one of the 
greatest difficulties of the Indian missionary, but the 


evasion was at the expense of the teaching of the 
brotherhood of man, which is one of the glories of the 


Christian faith. 

With similar motives the Capuchin friars permitted 
polygamy on the Congo, in the seventeenth century. 
At the end of that century, the missionary Zucchelli 
called the Christians of this district “baptized heathen, 
who have nothing of Christianity about them but the 
bare name.” ‘It will never be the men most worth 


_ winning that will be attracted by such methods, and 


those who are allured by the bait of an easy Chris- 
tianity will be a burden to the churches and never a 


- support. It is a mistake, too, to think that Christianity 


is the only religion that makes hard demands on its 
followers. When the forty days’ fast of the Moham- 
medan Ramadan, which forbids the partaking not only 


IN THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH 31 


of food but of water between sunrise and sunset, occurs 
in the hot weather, as it sometimes does, it is a severe 
test of loyalty. Nor is circumcision an attractive 
ceremony. 


8. Language Mastery an Important Factor. 

It is now a very generally accepted principle of 
missionary work that the missionary should learn the 
language of the people to whom he ministers, even 
when, as in the case of missionaries engaged in the work 
of higher education, he is also teaching them his own. 
One feature of Xavier’s work which greatly detracted 
from the effectiveness of his devoted labors was that, in 
India as in Japan, he made no attempt to learn any 
vernacular, but depended entirely on interpreters, who 
might or might not understand his language (Portu- 
guese). One reason why it was possible for Christianity | 
to disappear so completely from Northwest Africa, | 
where in the fifth century it had so strong a hold, was 
that apparently the Bible was not translated into the | 
language of the majority of the inhabitants. 


| 


9g. Factors That Make for Permanence To-day. 


If one lesson of the history of the church is that only 
an intelligent, enthusiastic church is a living church, 
another is the extent to which the life of the church 
depends on the life of the home. Our confidence that 
the mission churches of our day will escape the blight 
of impermanence which rested on so much of the results 
of the work of an earlier day, lies partly in the widely 
recognized ideal that in each nation the church must 
be indigenous, self-supporting, self-governing, and self- 
propagating, with a trained native clergy conducting 
the church service in the vernacular and the people 
reading the Scriptures in the vernacular. But it lies 


32 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


almost more in the knowledge that practically all over 
the world women missionaries are working side by side 
-with men, and are laying strong and sure the founda- 
.tions of the Christian home, which is the best guarantee 
of the permanence of the Christian faith. 

Churches and Christians may make mistakes and will 
suffer for their mistakes. The history of the progress 
of Christianity has not been one of uniform advance; 
but the impression its story leaves on the mind is that 
Jesus was right in comparing the kingdom of heaven 
to leaven; that the power of God’s truth and God’s love 
revealed in Jesus will work irresistibly, subduing ever 
new groups of men and ever new regions of thought 
and life, till the earth shall be full of the knowledge of 
the Lord as the waters cover the sea. 


V 


A CONSIDERATION OF SOME OBJECTIONS TO 
THE MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE 


Even among people who are Christian in no merely 
conventional sense, doubts are sometimes felt about 
the validity of the foreign enterprise of the church. 


1. The Worth of the Non-Christian Religions. 


In our age more is known than in any previous age 
of the nature and worth of the non-Christian religions. 
It is true that more intimate contact with the other 
peoples of the earth has shown that preconceived opin- 
ions of their religions were not always wrong. There 
are multitudes in Africa, for example, whose religion, 
if we can use the term, is inexpressibly degrading. We 
are apt to forget also that even in India there are vast 
numbers for whom India’s religious heritage is hardly 
even a name, who in the things of the spirit have 
hardly risen above the level of the more backward 
African races. 

Yet the study of the last century has done much to 
reveal to the Western church hitherto unsuspected 
depths of insight and riches of spiritual thought and 
achievement in some of the world religions. ‘It is as- 
tonishing to us that those who went before us could 
contemplate, not only with equanimity, but with 
satisfaction, a world throughout its greater part sunk, 
as it seemed to them, in absolute ignorance of the living 
God. To us the problem is not, how God could grant a 
twilight of truth even to “the Gentiles,” but how the 
existence of the terror, the ignorance, the anguish, that 

33 


34 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


seem inseparable from so many primitive religions, is 
compatible with belief in the God who is light and in 
whom is no darkness at all. 


2. The Uniqueness of Christianity Questioned. 


Not only has the study of the non-Christian faiths 
destroyed the superstition that the condition of “hea- 
thendom”’ is that of unrelieved spiritual. darkness; 
the same study has rendered less sharp and clear the 
boundaries that separate the Christian faith from the 
world faiths, and has led some to doubt whether it is 
possible any longer to speak of Christianity as the 
supreme and unique revelation of God. Christian 
apologetes now sometimes feel themselves called on to 
defend the originality and finality of the faith they 
represent. 

It is well that it should be so; for the dynamic of our 
creed lies less in the beliefs we inherit from our fathers 
than in those we win for ourselves. Those who would 
have a living faith should welcome the challenge that 
the comparative study of religions has brought us, to 
ask ourselves just what we mean when we say that 
Jesus is not a son of God but the Son of God. 

His uniqueness does not lie altogether in his teaching. 
A careful comparison of the words of Jesus with the 
Old Testament and with the Jewish literature of the 
period subsequent to the Old Testament shows the 
often unsuspected extent to which the piety of Jesus 
was nurtured on the Jewish Scriptures. We no longer 
resent the discovery of literary parallels even to some 
of the most memorable of the sayings of Jesus; they 
are but additional proofs that God has never left him- 
self without a witness. The meaning of Jesus for our 
age and for all ages lies rather in what he was and in 
what he is. 


THE MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE 35 


It is easy for us to belittle ancient ecclesiastical con- 
troversies on the nature of “the person of Christ,”’ and 
the conclusions to which they led. If the categories of 
a former age do not adequately express the religious 
experiences of our day, it is for us not to ignore the 
question, but to find formule that more adequately in- 
terpret what Jesus is to us. From the first, Christians 
seem to have felt instinctively, as they brooded over the 
teaching, the doings, the sufferings of Jesus, that the 
fundamental question was: Who was it that thus 
taught and did and suffered? What was his authority ? 
That question is still fundamental. We may, while 
ignoring it, preach what is in some sense a Christian 
gospel; but, sooner or later, it forces itself on us. 

There is a certain irony in the fact that, at the very 
time when Christian scholars are writing books in de- 
fence of the spiritual authority of Jesus, when many 
Christians feel it incumbent on them as educated men 
to regard Christianity simply as one faith among others, 
educated non-Christians are more or less frankly con- 
fessing that the Christian religion is the ideal to which 
other religions point. The Hindu apologetic of our 
day largely consists in maintaining that the parts of 
Hinduism, which from the Christian point of view are 
objectionable, are not essential to that religion, that 
on a broad view there is no fundamental difference be- 
tween Hinduism and Christianity. In many parts of 
the world to-day, the life and teaching of Jesus are 
moulding the thought and the conduct of men far 
beyond the confines of the Christian church. 

We shall have something to say later on regarding 
the spell that Jesus has cast over many of the finest 
minds in the East. The following statement at least 
will hardly be questioned: If Jesus Christ is not God’s 
final revelation to men, we cannot even begin to con- 


36 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


ceive what the lines of a loftier revelation would be. 
It is indeed an instructive exercise to take the criticisms | 
that have been levelled at Jesus (such as temper and 
uncharitableness in dealing with the Pharisees), and 
ask ourselves in each case what new light is shed on 
Jesus’ attitude to life by his words or actions that called 
forth the criticism. That the revolution effected by the 
gospel of Jesus has not been greater, is attributable to 
no limitation in the ideal he set before us, or in the 
dynamic he has given us to carry out that ideal. 


3. Religion as a Function of the National Spirit. 


There is again in certain quarters a feeling that a 
nation’s religion is a function of the national spirit; 
that each nation works out the form of religion best 
adapted to its own needs, and that to invite a non- 
. Christian people to adopt Christianity is in effect to 
encourage a more or less serious distortion of the na- 
tional genius. This attitude is perhaps most frequently 
found among the classes whose attachment to Chris- 
tianity is mainly an inherited tradition. A strong in- 
centive to accept this point of view is the fear that the 
social and industrial situation will, from our point of 
view, be changed for the worse as Christianity spreads 
_ among those of other faiths. A subtle factor in the 
situation is the half-acknowledged contempt that so 
many white people feel for all the interests of the 
colored. When they say, “Their own religion is good 
enough for them,” there is a world of meaning in the 
“them.” No one who knows the thought movements 
of to-day can be blind to the prevalence of the feeling 
that, in things religious, each nation should be left to 
work out its own salvation, and to the extent to which 
this sentiment cripples the church in its foreign enter- 
prise. 


THE MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE 37 


Putting it in its simplest terms the assumption is that 
religious ideas which enter a country from the outside 
can never be for the good of its people. Expressed thus 
bluntly, the statement hardly needs serious considera- 
tion. Again and again in the history of the world a na- 
tion has enriched and uplifted its life by the acceptance 
of a religion which, in the first place, came to it as 
foreign. The African tribes which have adopted Mo- 
hammedanism have done so, in part at least, because 
they instinctively felt that they were being thereby 
raised to a higher level of thought and life. Even in 
those circles of the West where the anti-missionary 
feeling is strongest, there is no movement for a return 
to the forms of worship which prevailed in our country 
before the importation of a foreign Christianity. Will 
any one suggest that the educated Japanese, who in 
such large numbers have become Christians, would be 
better Japanese as Buddhists, Shintoists, or atheists? 
In the case of the outcastes of India, only a degree of 
prejudice amounting to heartless cruelty would dis- 
courage them from embracing a faith, however foreign, 
which will restore to them some measure of the dignity 
and self-respect of manhood. Nor is this true only of 
the outcastes. India has progressed and will progress, 
only to the extent to which she abandons some of the 
most characteristic tenets of Hinduism, adopts the 
Christian view of human brotherhood, and responds 
to the Christian call to co-operate with God in working 
out the salvation of the country. It is a curious coinci- 
dence that on this subject the laissez-faire Westerner 
is at one with the Animists. They too are of the opinion 
that it is not a question of better or worse; each nation 
has its own customs and its own religion, and there is an 
end of the matter. Warneck tells us that the Pakpak 
tribe had a pleasant custom of strangling their parents 


38 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


and eating them when they got old. When Battak 
evangelists remonstrated with them, in all good con- 
science they replied, just as any British or American 
trader might have replied: ““Every people has its own 
customs and that is ours.” 


4. The Denationalizing Influence of Christianity. 


Akin to the criticism just discussed is the accusation 
often brought against missionaries that they “dena- 
tionalize”’ the “‘natives”’ among whom they work. One 
peculiarity of this charge is that it is often found in the 
mouth of missionaries themselves, either as against 
other missionaries, or as against their own converts who 
adopt foreign customs and manners. It is symptomatic 
of the age in which we live that the charge of dena- 
tionalization is held to be one of peculiar gravity. The 
accusation of denationalization does not come very 
gracefully from people who take their fashions in re- 
ligion from Palestine, in philosophy from Greece, in 
music from Germany, in art from Italy, in dress from 
Paris, in silks from India, in dressing-gowns and bric-a- 
brac from Japan, and who claim and exercise the right 
to adopt into the national life whatever in any sphere 
or in any country seems likely to be of service. 


5. Outward Changes Due to Christianity. 


Perhaps India is the country where the question is 
most acute. When we ask for details of denational- 
ization, usually we are pointed to certain features in 
food, clothing, or domestic habits and manners where, 
it is claimed, the Indian Christians have abandoned 
national customs in favor of foreign. In particular, 
many educated Indian Christians have adopted a form 
of European costume, discarding the dhoti, or semi-kilt, 
the characteristic Indian men’s dress; thereby, it is 


THE MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE 39 


said, unnecessarily estranging themselves from their 
countrymen. 

The Indian Christian reply is twofold. The followers 
of each religion in India, they say, have adopted a 
characteristic dress. The Christian has the same right 
to do this as has the Hindu, the Mohammedan, or the 
Parsee. Further, the dhoti is not the characteristic In- 
dian dress. It is not worn by the Mohammedans, 
who number one-fifth of the population, nor by the 
Parsees, who play so distinguished a part in the national 
life. Nor do Hindus of good social position always 
wear it. The educated Indian Christian can see no 
reason why he should be identified with the Hindu 
community and especially with its less influential 
sections. 

In a country where European prestige has long been 
and still is high, the temptation to imitate European 
ways must always be great for any section of the people 
that is anxious for social recognition. In any case the 
question of the extent to which a change so great as 
that from Hinduism, or even Mohammedanism, to 
Christianity reverberates through the whole personal- 
ity, and is to be allowed to produce unforeseen and, 
to some, unwelcome consequences in the expression of 
personality, is one on which the persons most affected 
must be permitted to have the final word. 


6. The Real Transformation. 


In fact, however, the departures from national cus- 
tom commonly classed as examples of denationalization 
often refer to matters more or less external and rela- 
tively unimportant. When we look at the deeper im- 
plications of Christianity on the one side, and national- 
ism on the other, we realize that to resent the charge of 
denationalization implies that we either misunderstand 


40 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


the genius of Christianity, or attach an unusually broad 
meaning to nationalism. An Indian, a Japanese, a 
Chinese, and still more an African, who has experienced 
anything that can be called Christian conversion, 
whether or no he continues to wear his former dress, to 
eat his former food, and to speak his former language, 
is a new creature with new standards and new ambi- 
tions, not only for himself but for his country. 

One has heard an educated Indian Christian at a 
public meeting express the hope that the time would 
come when his countrymen would think of themselves 
not primarily as Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians, 
and Parsees, but simply as Indians. If what he meant 
was that difference of creed need not interfere with 
common citizenship, the aspiration was commendable. 
One has to grant, too, that in the West, in our own time, 
national feeling has been a far more potent influence 
than community of religion. Yet, from the first, 
Christians recognized a new loyalty, other and more 
binding than that to the state. In so far as nationalism 
involves an unreasoning support of the institutions 
and the policy of one’s country, and an undervaluation 
of the virtues and the claims of other countries, Chris- 
tians everywhere will be “‘denationalized”’ to the extent 
to which they understand the genius of their religion. 


7. Christianity Renationalizes. 

Not only will loyalty to Jesus transform traditional 
types of character; but the extent to which it will 
change social sentiments, customs, and institutions is 
limited only by the extent to which these already con- 
form to Christian ideals. We know more of the life of 
the infant church at Corinth than of any other of the 
early churches. Within a few years of Paul’s first 
visit, the Christians of Corinth were asked to adopt a 


THE MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE 41 


non-Greek method of conducting litigation, Christian 
slaves were demanding their freedom, Christian women 
were claiming a measure of liberty not permitted by 
Greek custom and the right in the church meetings to 
disregard Greek conventions in the matter of dress. 
To such an extent had their new faith “ denationalized”’ 
them. But these illustrations suggest that what was 
going on was a process not of “denationalization”’ but 
of “renationalization.’’> A Christianity which did not 
challenge national custom and sentiment at many 
points would not be the religion of the New Testament. 

In modern times Christianity, with its inexorable 
insistence on monogamy, inevitably disintegrates all 
features in the social system that depend on polygamy. 
An Indian weaver sometimes claims that he needs two 
wives to assist him in his work. If he becomes a Chris- 
tian, he must solve his industrial problem in some 
other way than by bigamy. The African employs his 
many wives in the cultivation of his bananas. The 
introduction of Christianity will involve many changes 
in the agricultural system, possibly very beneficial 
changes. As one African put it, ““a plow can do as much 
work as ten wives.”” Wherever Christianity successfully 
encounters Mohammedanism, there ensue vital changes 
in the social system. Whether or no we accept the 
Christian view that these changes are “reforms,” at 
least they involve some measure of “denationalization.”’ 


8. It Challenges Age-Long Abuses. 


In India three of the most prominent features of the 
*‘national”’ life have been the caste system, the joint 
family system, and the subordination of women. All 
of these have been seriously challenged by the spread 
of Christian ideas; all of them will disappear as the 
Christian church increases her influence. The caste 


42 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


system, which draws impassable barriers between men, 
based on the accident of birth, which justifies Pharisaic 
contempt on the one side and abject cringing on the 
other, claims divine sanction for the dental of the funda- 
mental Christian teaching of the brotherhood of man. 
The joint family system is that by which the sons and 
the grandsons in their turn bring their wives under the 
paternal roof, and the women folks are subject to the 
senior married woman. The justification for the joint 
family is that in India girls become wives and mothers 
long before they are fit to assume the responsibilities of 
wifehood and motherhood. But a country in which the 
wife is not the mistress of the home is depriving it- 
self in Jarge measure of that contribution which women 
can make to the national life. Many thoughtful Hindus 
are as much opposed to the system as are Christians. 

Closely akin to this feature of the national life is the 
position of strict subordination occupied by women in 
India; a subordination which is partly the cause and 
partly the effect of the fact that the education of girls 
has lagged so far behind that of boys. It is very possi- 
ble to exaggerate both the extent and the significance 
of this subordination. In India it has been found com- 
patible with happy home life, with a large measure of 
respect for women, and with the supremacy of women 
in all matters of religious observance. Yet no people 
can humiliate its women as India has done, in practice 
as well as in theory, without paying the penalty to the 
full. A country in which birth as a woman is regarded 
as the penalty of a misspent life in a previous incarna- 
tion, in which only by breach of national and religious 
custom and as a rare mark of special favor will a man 
allow his wife to sit at the same table as himself, is a 
country which is ripe for a sweeping Christian revolu- 
tion. 


THE MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE 43 


' The charge then of “denationalizing the natives” is 
one which it is as idle to deny as to bring forward. Un- 
less Christianity has lost its ancient power, it will mould 
anew the life of every nation that it touches. Just as 
under its influence even now, the social, industrial, and 
political systems of the West are changing more or less 
rapidly, so it will effect profound transformations in 
every department of the life of Africa and the Orient. ; 


9. A True Assimilation to Christianity Requires Time. 


Indeed, in view of the radical “renationalization” 
that a living Christianity will effect anywhere, it is 
perhaps not altogether a matter for regret that the 
evangelization of certain countries has not proceeded 
more rapidly than it has. In the parable of the leaven 
the process of assimilation, like the growth in the para- 
ble of the mustard seed, was gradual. Time is required 
for the difficult and delicate adjustments made neces- 
sary by the passage of a people from a non-Christian 
to a Christian life and institutions, the amount of time 
required depending partly on the stage and the kind of 
civilization already reached by the nation. It seems 
safe to say that the more gradual the growth of the 
thought of a people and of the forms in which that 
thought expresses itself, the more likely are its social 
institutions to be firmly founded and abiding. 

Part of the trouble in India is that what is really a 
conglomerate of nations and communities, at almost 
incredibly different stages of development, is being 
forced in a few years through stages of “reform”’ in 
the political and other spheres which in the West rep- 
resented the work of centuries. In India various fac- 
tors have been at work besides the Christian church; 
but in various parts of the world to-day, even if we 
look only at the religious factor, the transformation 


44 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


effected by Christianity is so far-reaching that time is 
required for the consolidation of results if these are to 
be permanent. We are very far from the stage where 
missionary zeal has to be deprecated or discouraged; 
but, looking back, we can see that, if expectations have 
at times been disappointed, there have been compensa- 
tions. Our Lord, with the wisdom born of experience 
as a builder, warned us, in spiritual things, to look to 
the foundations. 


VI 


REASONS ADVANCED AGAINST ITS 
URGENCY 


1. Religious Propaganda Sometimes Deemed Imper- 
tinent. 

Many again feel that anything in the nature of re- 
ligious propaganda violates what are called “the sacred 
rights of conscience.” A man’s religion, we are told, 
is a personal and private matter, with which for any 
outsider to interfere is an impertinence. Among non- 
Christians this feeling sometimes shows itself in their 
resentment at any attempt by foreigners to induce 
them, as they express it, to “change their religion’’; 
among Christians, in the more or less openly expressed 
sentiment that those who interest themselves in the 
religion of others are busybodies in other men’s mat- 
ters. 

This view of religion is at the opposite pole from that 
of the persecutor, who believes it is his sacred duty, not 
only to induce others, but to compel them, at whatever 
extremity of pain or peril, to accept his creed. Those 
who argue like this would usually not object to attempts 
at political conversion; the reason apparently being 
that politics is regarded as dealing with living issues, 
while a man’s religion consists of a set of ineffective 
and generally inoffensive beliefs and practices. 


2. Religion Expresses Life’s Values. 
Let us freely grant that the working creed of most of 
us is so much at variance with the creed we profess, that 
45 | 


46 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


the sceptically minded have a certain justification for 
their conception of religion as a harmless luxury. This 
detached way of looking at the matter may sometimes 
indicate a large-minded tolerance; it may also indicate 
a complete indifference to the facts of history. Our 
religion is, in one aspect of it, our sense of life’s values, 
and it is this sense that governs our conduct in big 
things and in little. Given the Mchammedan view of 
women, we get polygamy and the purdah. The caste 
system of India would crumble far more rapidly than it 
is doing, were not the Hindu convinced that it is God 
who has drawn these impassable barriers between caste 
and caste. The “Cursed be Canaan”’ type of theology 
gave us negro slavery; just as “Adam first, then Eve,” 
kept women in Christian countries in social and politi- 
cal subjection for many centuries. 

The Crusades, the “killing times,” the slaughter of 
African twins, the atrocities perpetrated by the poison 
ordeal, all were inspired by motives that were strictly 
religious. The merchants who grow rich by exporting 
rum to Africa may not always pose as religious men; 
yet their choice of their life’s work is determined by 
their conviction of the supreme value of money on the 
one hand, of the negligible value of African life on the 
other. Much recent history, again, is an attempt to 
translate into practice the Christian conception of 
personality; witness the new status of women and the 
new attitude to the poor, the aged, and the social out- 
cast; the enlarged conception of social responsibility 
and the new orientation of political power. Even those 
Christians who have no desire to see Christendom 
enlarge its borders are no more anxious than the rest 
of us to see Mohammedanism spreading in Europe or 
in Asia. A Christianized Orient might not be more 
subservient to the West than an Orient Buddhist, 


REASONS AGAINST ITS URGENCY 47 


Hindu, or Confucian; it might well prove to be even 
more “‘troublesome’’; yet the introduction of a vital 
Christianity into the East will release it from age-old 
shackles of many kinds and let mankind see for the 
first time of what it is capable. 


3. The Need for Courtesy in Mission Work. 


There are, however, valuable elements in this feeling, 
however mistaken on the whole, of the unseemliness of 
conducting a Christian propaganda among men of alien 
faiths. ‘ For one thing, we are increasingly sensitive to 
the departure from Christian standards involved in all 
that savors of “patronage” of the colored races. The 
missionary of earlier days may have felt himself 
tempted, not so much by his own vanity as by the cir- 
cumstances amid which, and the attitude of the people 
for whom, he worked, to regard himself as a teacher, 
“sent down,” as one Indian expressed it, for the benefit 
of “the natives.’ Perhaps most missionaries now would 
take a humbler estimate of their functions, and recog- 
nize that they are privileged to learn as well as to 
teach, ! | 

In particular it is more and more recognized that any 
element of compulsion in connection with missionary 
effort is unseemly; that, for example, to ask non- 
Christian boys to join in religious exercises in which 
they cannot take part conscientiously, or to make a 
Bible lesson compulsory where there is no alternative 
to the mission school or college, may easily lead to a 
breach of Christian courtesy. 


4. It Is Handicapped by the Failures of Western 
Christianity. 

Again, we are painfully conscious of all that Christi- 

anity has failed to achieve in the West. Britain’s 


48 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


shameful drink bill and drink traffic, the slums of 
Europe and America, the white slave trade, and the 
World War are heavy shackles on the feet of them who 
profess to bring good tidings from Christian to non- 
Christian countries. In our eagerness to make bold 
claims for Christianity we have been guilty of a good 
deal of loose thinking and careless speech, which are 
beginning to react on ourselves. We have spoken of 
the “Christian”? West, ignoring the large sections of 
its population who could, without much injustice to 
them or even without much resentment from nen be 
definitely classed as pagan. 

Even among those classes which have more or less 
deliberately adopted Christian ideals, there is still a 
good deal of vagueness as to the bearings of these ideals 
on their practical life. It is of the very essence of state- 
craft that a state in its moral demands can never go 
far beyond the ethical attainments or standards of the 
general body of the citizens. We have been inclined 
also to forget that, while there is such a thing as the 
Christianizing of the conscience of the community, 
ultimately Christianity is a way of life for the individual 
which cannot be thrust on any one from the outside, 
but can be followed only by those who feel the attrac- 
tion of it. Along with our sowers of wheat we have our 
sowers of tares, as industrious as ever they were and 
perhaps not much less successful. Altogether, we have 
learned that our claims for the saving power of the 
gospel as exhibited in the history of Christian countries, 
will be effective in proportion as they are made with 
wise caution and discrimination. 

Again, we recognize that there is often a certain un- 
fairness in comparing the African or the Oriental of 
to-day with the Briton or American of to-day. If we 
hesitate to hold up the public or private life of Western 


REASONS AGAINST ITS URGENCY 49 


communities as a sample of the power of the Christian 
religion to raise men and women to a new scale of moral 
endeavor and achievement, in many cases we would be 
still more reluctant to draw our illustrations from the 
Western life of two or three centuries ago. In the his- 
tory of nations two or three centuries form a very short 
period. There are many chapters of which we are all 
ashamed in the history even of the church. 


5. The Supreme Test Is the Character of the Converts. 


Yet the test of the validity of the claims made for the 
Christian gospel is, and always must be, its life-giving 
and life-transforming power. There is a certain justice 
in comparing the ideals of different religions; but we 
are on firmer ground when we compare their fruitage 
in the lives of their most convinced and enthusiastic 
exponents. 

‘One of the most striking tributes to Christianity is 
the way in which men of all religions and of no religion | 
expect a higher standard in Christian ethics from those | 
who profess to be followers of Jesus than from those 
who do not. It is on all hands assumed that to be a 
Christian, in more than name, is to be a person with a 
definite and easily recognizable type of character; that 
the true Christian is more just and honorable, more 
kind and merciful, more truthful and industrious, and, 
above all, purer in his sexual relations by the fact that 
he is a Christian. Flagrant moral transgressions, which 
when men of other faiths are guilty of them would 
hardly be related at all to their religious professions, 
are, in the case of Christians, felt by all, Christian and 
non-Christian alike, to be a reproach to the church of 
Christ. 


50 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


6. Some Criticisms of Converts Are Unfounded. 


All the more deadly are the frequent reckless asser- 
tions that, in non-Christian countries, the converts are 
morally less satisfactory and reliable than the non- 
Christians. These charges are all the more difficult 
to deal with, in that they are frequently vague hearsay 
statements emanating from marine engineers and others 
who have “visited foreign parts.’”’ We would all ac- 
knowledge the unfairness of taking the Broomielaw as 
typical of Scottish Christianity, of judging the Church 
of England by the Thames waterside characters, of 
blasting the reputation of the Dutch church on account 
of trying experiences on the streets of Rotterdam, or 
of taking a Genoese quay-porter or a Neapolitan ferry- 
man as a typical product of Roman Catholicism. No 
intelligent person whose acquaintance with the New 
World was confined to occasional dealings with the 
harbor population of Montreal or New York would 
pose as an authority on North American Christianity, 
even if most of his American acquaintances enrol them- 
selves on a census paper as Christians. Yet every one 
who has ever advocated the cause of missions knows 
that men, whose knowledge of Oriental Christianity is 
confined to an occasional visit to a seaport town, are 
widely regarded as witnesses of great weight on the 
value of missions. 

Unfavorable criticism sometimes comes also from 
Westerners residing among colored peoples, whose first- 
hand acquaintance with the Christian community is 
confined to one or two domestic servants, though occa- 
sionally white employers of labor on a larger scale pro- 
fess to be dissatisfied with their native Christian work- 
men. 


REASONS AGAINST ITS URGENCY 51 


7. Careful Discrimination Essential. 


In this respect missions have often suffered from the 
failure of their critics to note one or two important 
factors in the case : to distinguish, for example, between 
Protestants and Roman Catholics, or between those 
who have adopted the Christian faith as the result of 
conscientious conviction and those who call themselves 
Christians to curry favor with the foreigner. There is 
further failure to discriminate between converts, who 
may reasonably be expected to show some genuine 
change of life, and hereditary Christians who may have 
long since lost any vital connection with the church. 
In the mission fields, every man who bears the Christian 
name, however little he may be responsible for bearing 
it, is expected to exhibit the Christian virtues. 


8. White Employers and Colored Workmen. 


It is unnecessary to suggest that white employers of 
colored labor are, as a class, prejudiced against Chris- 
tianity. The fact remains that there is a great tempta- 
tion for employers to prefer, at least for the less skilled 
work, unsophisticated natives who have never been 
“spoiled”? by education, who have never been taught 
Christian ideas of personality, or manhood, or human 
rights; and whose wants are restricted to the elementary 
human needs. Christian missionaries may sometimes 
have made mistakes in giving their converts, and the 
children of their converts, an education that fitted them 
for a life very different from that they were actually 
going to lead. Much anxious thought has been given 
and is being given to the question of a Christian educa- 
tion that varies with the needs of different spheres. 

White employers of colored labor, as Schweitzer has 
reminded us, often deserve more consideration than 


52 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


they receive. They are often responsible to some distant 
company or intangible body of shareholders, whose 
one aim is the delivery of as great a quantity of goods 
as possible. The white employer often has a high sense 
of duty and begins with the desire to be at least fair 
to his colored labor. Yet the colored labor on which he 
must depend is often expensive and unreliable, largely 
because the workmen have never learned habits of 
punctuality and persistent work or developed a sense 
of responsibility. Carelessness, dishonesty, or a pro- 
longed unauthorized holiday that, to the workman, 
seems at the worst of the nature of an escapade, may 
bring the employer into quite unmerited disgrace and 
cause serious loss to those who are financing the opera- 
tions. Repeated experiences of this kind are apt to 
harden the most tender heart and engender a cynical 
disbelief in the worth of the colored man. 

This is one side of the picture; but there is another 
and darker side illustrated in a story which Doctor 
Dennis tells. Though the story is over a hundred years 
old, it still has its moral for us. In 1823 a law was 
passed by the British legislature that was regarded as 
securing an important reform in the treatment of the 
slaves in Demerara. The great boon secured to the 
slaves by this law was that they should not be worked 
more than nine hours a day, and that women should not 
be flogged. When the news reached Demerara, it “was 
received with great indignation by the planters” and 
the governor refused to proclaim it. “‘ Distorted rumors 
of the withholding of some good news so excited the 
negroes that an insurrection followed, which was put 
down with frightful cruelties. The Reverend John 
Smith was falsely accused of aiding and abetting 
in rebellion, was tried by court martial, and publicly 
sentenced to be hanged. The sentence was not carried 


REASONS AGAINST ITS URGENCY = 33 


out, but Mr. Smith was confined in a loathsome ma- 
larious prison-cell, where he fell a victim to a swift and 
fatal illness.”’ 


9. Christian Labor not Necessarily the Least Trouble- 
some. 

While the Christian workman should be surpassed 
by none in faithfulness, one would hesitate to claim 
that Christian labor either is, or should be, cheaper or 
less “troublesome”? than non-Christian. Much that 
to the unsympathetic employer looks like “‘cheek”’ or 
insubordination is really imperfectly digested theology. 
Moreover, by creating a new desire for cleanliness, 
decency, sanitation, and education, Christianity does 
tend to make living somewhat more expensive for 
Christian workmen, and therefore to make them dis- 
satisfied with wages that might be sufficient for people 
‘whose better instincts have never been aroused. The 
claim has been made for Chinese laborers that their 
work is cheaper, more satisfactory, and less harassing 
to the employer than that of any other nation. One 
would rather see Christian workmen distinguished for 
intelligence, integrity, and reliability than for cheapness 
and unmanly docility. As the aims of employers are 
not always compatible with the claims of Christian 
workmen, we must be prepared for a certain amount of 
continued criticism from this side. 


1o. Other Considerations. 

One of the surprises and disappointments of mis- 
sionary effort is the frequency with which depreciatory 
estimates of the character of native Christians is made 
in a tone of satisfaction, if not of glee; even when the 
critic is one who himself sits down at our Lord’s com- 
munion table. The frequent absence of any sense of 


54 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


brotherliness, of any feeling, where there has been a 
real moral lapse, that a brother’s shame is our shame, 
helps one to realize how far we are from Jesus’ concep- 
tion of the brotherhood and sisterhood of those who do 
God’s will. 

The “native”? Christians who are most fiercely criti- 
cised are often drawn from classes which for millennia 
have been downtrodden and kept in ignorance. It is 
far harder for them than for us to reach even conven- 
tional standards of Christian morality. If they find 
-themselves in circumstances where they are denied 
the stimulus of daily Christian fellowship, whether 
with white people or colored, denied perhaps even the 
opportunity of the inspiration of the church service on 
Sunday, we can hardly wonder if they sometimes give 
a handle for unfriendly criticism. 


11. The Reality of Changed Lives. 


While criticism of missions and their products is 
common among irresponsible onlookers and young off- 
cials, an impressive array of testimonies might be 
gathered, coming from men of experience, especially 
those holding responsible positions which have com- 
pelled them to give careful study to the matter. Prob- 
_ably there is no extensive mission field which could not 
make its contribution to such a collection. When the 
Honorable James Bryce was British Ambassador at 
Washington, he pleaded with the Christian churches, in 
place of the beliefs and traditions of the backward 
races, which we were destroying and which formed the 
basis of the only morality they knew, to send to them 
“the supremest gift the world has ever received”’ and 
in which we believe the safety and future hope of the 
world lie—a knowledge of the life and the teachings of 
our Lord Jesus Christ. Stanley, the African traveller, 


REASONS AGAINST ITS URGENCY 55 


said he went to Africa as prejudiced against mis- 
sions as the worst infidel in London, but he was con- 
verted by Livingstone, though the latter had made no 
effort to convert him. After two and a half years of 
colonial administration, the Right Honorable Winston 
Churchill paid a lofty tribute to the work of Christian 
missions, especially in Uganda, where, “in the heart of 
Africa, plunged hundreds of miles away in the centre of 
that mysterious continent, you find a race of negroes 
docile, peaceful, law-abiding, and polite, of whom a 
very great number have embraced the Christian faith 
and have abandoned their native customs, deeply 
though they may have been ingrained in their nature, 
and where more than a hundred thousand persons have 
been taught to read and write without the state con- 
tributing a penny, solely by the influence of missions.” 
Commander Charles O’Neil of the U. 5S. Navy paid a 
similar tribute to the work of the missionaries in 
Turkey; and the Honorable Charles Denby, formerly 
U. S. minister to China, spoke in the most cordial 
terms of the value of mission work in China. To do 
justice to this aspect of the subject would require a 
volume. 7 

There is no need in this place to retell the oft-toid 
tale of the way in which the gospel goes on its world- 
conquering mission, revealing and calling into activ- 
ity unsuspected latent capacities of mind and spirit, 
breathing life into dry bones, and bringing to birth 
literally a new creation. We are here concerned with 
some considerations constantly forgotten by those who, 
on the basis of professed experience, maintain that, 
except among white men, the quality of life is lowered 
and not raised by conversion to Christianity. The white 
man’s fear of the result of the impact of Christianity on 
the colored races is at least not a new phenomenon. It 


56 _ THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


was at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Doctor 
Robinson tells us, that Mr. Elias Neau, a Frenchman, 
was appointed to teach the negroes and Indians and 
children of New York. He was handicapped in his 
work by the fact that “the generality” of the “‘inhabi- 
tants”? were “strangely prejudiced with a horrid no- 
tion, thinking the Christian knowledge”’ would be “a 
means to make their slaves more cunning and apter to 
wickedness.’ Half a century later in this same field, 
the clergyman in charge of the work reported that “not 
one single black’? who had been “‘admitted by him to 
the Holy Communion” had “turned out bad, or been 
in any shape a disgrace to our holy profession,” and 
that the masters of the negroes had become “more 
desirous than they used to be of having them in- 
structed.’ It is a very mild tribute; but it is only one 
in the long succession of testimonies from all parts of 
the world that bear witness that the Christian gospel is 
to-day, as it was from the beginning, not primarily the 
maker of creeds but the maker of men. 

One could wish that those who are so critical about 
the ethical attainments of the members of the mission 
churches could know of the price these willingly pay 
for loyalty to their faith, in the endurance of pain and 
shame and loss; could know how manfully they meet 
« the supreme test: he that loseth his life shall save it. 
The story of the fidelity of the Christians of China 
during the Boxer rising has taken its place among 
the imperishable memorials of the Christian church. 
Dr. Arthur J. Brown has gathered for us some records. 
“Two graduates of Teng-chou College remained for 
weary weeks in a filthy dungeon when they might have 
purchased freedom at any moment by renouncing 
Christianity. Pastor Meng, of Paoting-fu, a direct 
descendant of Mencius, was one hundred and twenty 


REASONS AGAINST ITS URGENCY 57 


miles from home when the outbreak occurred. He was 
safe where he was, but he hurried back to die with his 
flock.” “A poor cook was seized and beaten, his ears 
were cut off, his mouth and cheeks gashed with a sword 
and other unspeakable mutilations inflicted. Yet he 
stood as firmly as any martyr of the early church.” 
A Chinese preacher, mangled and half-dead after a 
hundred blows on the bare back, chose to suffer another 
hundred blows rather than deny his Master; though 
unconsciousness came and he was left for dead before 
his torturers could finish their work.! 

All the world knows how Arthur Jackson gave up his 
life for the people of Manchuria during the epidemic of 
pneumonic plague in 1911. Very few know of the 
courageous and patient service of Indian Christians in 
fighting the bubonic plague that has ravaged India so 
terribly during the last quarter of a century. In one of 
the earlier epidemics Doctor Agnes Henderson was 
asked to take charge of a municipal plague camp at 
Nagpur, in the Central Provinces of India. She called 
for volunteers from among the hospital staff. One of 
the first to volunteer was Sitabai, a gentle Indian girl 
who had been a member of the church for only a few 
weeks. She did her duty faithfully, knowing well the 
risk she ran, even when some cases of pneumonic plague 
were brought in, until at last she offered herself a living 
sacrifice for her people. Is there any mission station 
anywhere, with any length of history behind it, that 
could not tell similar stories of humble converts who 
loved not their lives unto the death? ‘ 

\ 
12. Diminishing Emphasis on the Future Life. 

Yet another factor in the situation makes the mis- 

sionary’s task seem to many at least less urgent than it 
1 New Forces in Old China, p. 275. 


58 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


seemed in previous generations. It was perhaps never 
quite true to say that the evangelizing efforts of the 
church of yesterday had in view primarily life after 
death. It'is however no exaggeration to say that the 
fate of the individual soul in a future life was the most 
powerful stimulus to missionary effort. Christian litera- 
ture, Christian preaching, and the public and private 
activities of Christian people, all suggest that the 
thought of the church of to-day is largely confined to 
the life that now is; though this important change in 
the centre of gravity of Christian interest is only par- 
tially realized and acknowledged. We shall have some- 
thing to say later on changing conceptions of salvation. 
In the meantime we only note that, for good or evil, the 
old watchwords of missionary campaigns have largely 
lost their power. We believe that we conceive the 
claims of the non-Christian world on the church even 
more truly than our fathers did; but perhaps we have 
hardly learned to express the note of urgency as con- 
vineingly for our generation as they did for theirs. 


Vil 
THE MISSIONARY AIM 


1. The Conversion of Individuals. 


As already indicated, in the last generation or two 
a somewhat radical change has taken place in the aim 
of the church, at least in her proximate aim, in her ap- 
proach to the world. The present outburst of activity 
in the foreign enterprise of the churches has coincided, 
roughly at least, with their changed attitude to so- 
cial problems. We might describe, with a somewhat 
deceptive simplicity, the recent evolution of Christian . 
thought and purpose by saying that, whereas formerly 
the goal of evangelistic work was the salvation of the 
individual soul, we think of the man rather than of : 
the soul, and of the group rather than of the individual. | 
It was inevitable that the church’s conception of 
her mission to the larger world should undergo a corre- 
sponding development. In reality all that has happened 
is a change of emphasis. Our fathers, and their fathers 
before them, knew quite well, and acted on the knowl- 
edge, that the social surroundings, the moral and spirit- 
ual environment of the Indian or the Chinese, were 
among the most powerful factors influencing his atti- 
tude to the Christian gospel; that in so far as these 
could be Christianized, would the Christian approach 
to the Oriental be simplified. This in part explains 
the enthusiasm for Christian education of the earlier 
Christian missionaries, especially to India. 
(On the other hand, however much we may speak of 
the social implications of Christianity, we know it is as 
59 


60 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


true abroad as it is at home that a people can never, in 
any Christian sense of the word, be “saved” in the 
mass, that in the long run the level of the spiritual life 
of a nation depends on the voluntary choice of indi- 
viduals. Only those who without much reflection fol- 
low current tendencies would undervalue the impor- 
tance among missionary aims of the endeavor to win 
men and women, one by one, to Christian belief and 
practice. | 


2. Philanthropic Work. 


In the prosecution of this aim, the missionary whose 
main work is the preaching of the gospel is now a some- 
what rare exception. It is indeed difficult for the non- 
expert, however interested, to keep pace with the vast 
and varied ramifications of the modern missionary 
enterprise. These are of such a nature that even those 
who have least sympathy with their ultimate aim, 
unless they are devoid of ordinary human feeling, have 
nothing but admiration for the methods by which it is 
sought to reach that aim. 

The church’s foreign ambassadors to-day conduct 
dispensaries and hospitals, general and specialized, in- 
cluding, for example, institutions for the blind and leper 
asylums. Some of them have a reputation that extends 
far beyond the limits of the country in which they 
work, especially in such departments as general or 
ophthalmic surgery. They have been pioneers in various 
branches of education; for example, in the education 
of the girls and women and of the low castes of India. 
To an astonishing degree the education of the Orient 
and of Africa is either directly in the hands of Christian 
missionaries or is indirectly inspired by them; and that 
in all its stages from the kindergarten to university 
post-graduate work. Under education we include not 


THE MISSIONARY AIM 61 


only general culture but also special training in the- 
ology, in medicine and nursing, in pedagogy, in agri- 
culture, and in industries. 

Certain missionary industrial schools, notably in 
Africa, are recognized over wide areas as great civilizing 
institutions. In those devastating famines in India and 
China, that are as great a problem to faith as to state- 
craft, the Christian church can always be relied on to 
play a worthy part. During the ravages of epidemic 
disease—and large tracts of the Orient are practically 
never free from epidemics that cause a mortality such 
as in the Western world is only a dim memory—the 
Christian doctor is always there. Missionaries conduct 
orphanages, engage in rescue work, superintend homes 
for the fallen, for the poor, for the intellectually sub- 
normal, for the education of the blind. By such institu- 
tions as co-operative credit banks they try to deliver 
poor peasant farmers from the double tyranny of the 
money-lender and of their own improvidence. Where- 
ever there are wrongs to be righted, slaves to be set 
free, the oppressed to be delivered, the down-trodden 
to be taught to rise, the banner of the cross is in the 
forefront of the work of rescue. It may indeed be 
fairly claimed that among the most notable of the tri- 
umphs of the missionary enterprise of the church is the 
association in the non-Christian mind of the name of 
Jesus with the alleviation of pain, the healing of sick- 
ness, the struggle against degradation and ignorance 
and tyranny in all their forms. 

One of the most important items of missionary 
activity is literary work in all its various branches of 
writing, translating, editing, printing, and publishing. 
Books, magazines, and pamphlets pour from mission 
presses by the hundred thousand, and multiply incal- 
culably the influence of their writers. In fact, a lead- 


62 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


ing missionary administrator, the Rev. William Paton, 
of the Mission Council of India, Burma, and Ceylon, has 
recently stated, as his matured conviction, that Chris- 
tian literature is equal in value to-day, on the mission 
field, to the preaching of the gospel. Many mission- 
aries have seats on municipal, district, and provincial 
councils, on school boards and university senates. 
Others are found in charge of student hostels, of farm 
settlements and model villages. Some lead or help in 
the administration of child welfare schemes; others 


are experts on problems of rural life, which in the East» 


are even more difficult of solution than in the West; 
yet others are pioneers in the industrial regeneration 
of the countries in which they work, while some are 
business men and women, responsible for the financial 
and the material side of the work of the society they 
represent. 


3. Illustrations of Missionary Activity. 
(a) Bible Translation. 


Let us take two illustrations from the less well-known 
fields of missionary activity. First, it will be worth while 
to look at the work which missionaries have done in 
the translation of the Scriptures. No missionary can 
make very much headway until he is able to give the 
people at least the Gospels in their own vernacular. 
The Bible Society, whose special work it is to care for 
the translation and the distribution of the Scriptures, 
is not merely an invaluable adjunct of the missionary 
societies, but is itself a missionary society of the first 
importance. The Bible is the most ubiquitous, un- 
wearied, and effective of all missionaries, going where 
no missionary can go and staying behind where the 
missionary has once been and has left. The story of 
the sale of the Scriptures, and the experiences of the 


™~ 


THE MISSIONARY AIM 63 


colporteurs and others whose work it is to sell them, 
often to tribes whose very names are unknown to most 
of us, sometimes in romantic, sometimes in very danger- 
ous surroundings—a story told with great skill and 
power in the annual reports of the British and Foreign 
Bible Society—is one of the most fascinating and con- 
vincing of all stories of missionary triumph. 

We are, however, at present concerned rather with 
the actual work of translation. In the case of the more 
primitive peoples, sometimes the missionary has to 
begin by inventing or adapting an alphabet. When the 
difficulty of the script has been overcome, all sorts of 
other problems arise. Sometimes the things, the names 
of which have to be translated, are unknown among 
the people for whom the translation is being made. 
In view of the simplicity of a Zulu lady’s toilet, it will 
readily be understood that the translators into Zulu 
are nonplussed by Isaiah’s description of the fine array 
of the daughters of Zion (Isaiah 3: 16 ff.). The Nupe 
language (Upper Niger) has no word for “bachelor,”’ 
and so in the translation a word was used which 
means literally “red-eye,” and is applied to a man who 
is sad because he would like to marry and have some 
one to cook his food, but has not enough money to buy 
a wife. Sometimes, again, it is an idea that is wanting 
in the native mind. The first missionaries to the 
Eskimos of Labrador, finding themselves forced to coin 
a word for “forgiveness,” hit on the “splendid picture 
word” “Issumagijaujungnainermik,”’ which conveys 
the idea “not being able to think about it any more.” 

Even where both ideas and words exist, it may be 
very difficult for the missionary to find the word. The 
chief translator into the Ila language (spoken in the 
district north of the Victoria Falls, on the Zambesi) 
learned the word for “‘trust”’ by hearing a native boy 


64 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


express doubts of the trustworthiness of a_ rickety 
ladder which the missionary had climbed. The Rever- 
end A. A. Lind, who was the first to attempt to reduce 
to writing the language of the Mardias, an aboriginal 
tribe in the south of the Central Provinces of India, 
describes the devices to which he had to resort to obtain 
from the Mardias the names of different objects. “I 
grunted like a pig, quacked like a duck, neighed like a 
horse, howled like a jackal, and so forth; I also had to 
exercise all my artistic abilities in drawing various kinds 
of animals, birds, and insects.” Gradually he made 
progress with the translation of Mark’s Gospel. Primi- 
tive psychology, again, makes difficulties for the trans- 
lator. Thus, according to Binandere, in the language of 
a Papuan tribe the seat of emotion is not the heart, 
but the throat; so that “‘bad throat’? means “sorrow,” 
a “throaty”? man is a wise man, and to “take the 
throat”? means to love. In the same language “‘thou 
gavest me no kiss”’ had to be translated “thou didst 
not smell my nose.” 

Even where the translation is correct from a purely 
dictionary point of view, the meaning conveyed to the 
native mind may be wide as the poles from that which 
the translator intended. The inexperienced translator 
may use a word for God that indicates not “‘the Source 
of all things”? but one of the innumerable gods of the 
“‘polytheist,” and for “sin” a word that suggests pri- 
marily a breach of some ritual regulation. In certain 
Indian languages “repentance” has sometimes been 
translated by a word which really indicates the penance 
by which an offender against caste law can be restored 
to caste membership. The Salvation Army in India 
has adopted as its Indian name “ Muktifauj” (Army of 
Deliverance), but the deliverance which the Hindu 
has in mind when he uses this word is very different 


THE MISSIONARY AIM 65 


from the Christian salvation that Commissioner Booth- 
Tucker used it to indicate. 

As the missionary gains insight into the customs and 
the language idioms of those among whom he works, 
misunderstandings are gradually recognized and cor- 
rected. Thus in Isaiah 33:15, 16 it is said of the man 
“who shall dwell on high”’ that “he shaketh his hands 
from holding of bribes.”? The first translators of the 
Old Testament into Hindi rendered this phrase, “‘ When 
a bribe is slipped into his hand, he dashes it down”’; but 
the pundits pointed out that the only meaning this 
phrase would convey to the Indian mind would be that 
the recipient was dissatisfied with the amount of the 
bribe offered. Similarly in Genesis 46:4 the words 
“Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes”’ was at 
first translated by a phrase which, according to the 
pundits, represented Joseph as giving his father two 
black eyes. 

The question involved in the nature of a translation 
of the Bible is a far bigger one than that of simple 
accuracy. The character of the language employed 
colors, in the mind of the reader, his whole conception 
of the religion whose sacred book the Bible is. We 
know now, what until recently we did not know, that 
the writers of the New Testament, guided surely in this 
by the Spirit of God, departed from the common custom 
of Greek writers and wrote in the language of the 
people, the language of the market-place and the home. 
The King James translation of the Bible is a miracle in 
its combination of simplicity and dignity, a combina- 
tion which makes any approximation to it the despair 
of “modern” translators. It was so, partly because it 
caught so faithfully the Hebrew spirit which dominates 
the Bible, partly because of the period in the history of 
English literature at which the translation was made, 


66 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


but largely because of the deliberate choice of the trans- 
lators. 

As Christianity is the religion of the common man, 
its sacred book must be written in a language which he 
can understand; the King James version is the Bible “in 
the vulgar tongue.” William Caxton, the first man to 
set up a printing-press in England, tells us that, in his 
translation, some desired him to use the most curious 
terms he could find, while others desired him to use old 
and homely terms. We still have those two schools. 
When a so-called vernacular translation is full of terms 
far beyond the capacity of the average person to under- 
stand, it is in fact an intimation that the religion is 
not meant for him. On the other hand, the use of un- 
dignified and too colloquial expressions suggests that 
the religion is not meant for educated men. Harnack 
tells us that one great obstacle to the early spread of 
Christianity lay in the old Latin version of the Bible, 
which was written in vulgar Latin and was so literal 
as to be almost unintelligible. Current criticisms of our 
modern translations by educated “‘natives”’ are not 
always justified; but the fact that they are made is 
sufficient evidence of the importance of having Bible 
versions of which the educated Christian need not be 
ashamed. Yet even more important is it to have trans- 
lations which will win the verdict given to Sir George 
Grierson’s version in the Magahi dialect of Bihari 
(Northeast India). The villagers, as one of them read 
aloud from Mark’s Gospel to an assembled group, 
“looked pleased and nodded to each other while hear- 
ing the dialect of their homes.” 


(b) Co-operative Credit. 


Let us take one more illustration from a very different 
sphere of missionary activity. In most parts of the 


~ 


THE MISSIONARY AIM 67 


world farmers have to borrow money; but the indebted- 
ness of the Indian farmer is chronic and crushing. 
Multitudes of Indian peasants have been little more 
than bond-servants of the village money-lender. For 
this there have been various reasons, such as illiteracy 
and improvidence, the habit of turning savings into 
ornaments or burying them in the ground, the frequent 
occurrence of bad seasons, and the extraordinary ex- 
penditure incurred by Indians of all classes on the 
occasion of a funeral in the family or (in many castes) 
the marriage of a daughter. The government plan of 
advancing loans on easy terms for farming operations 
or for land improvements had not got to the root of the 
difficulty; since it did nothing to alter the character or 
the outlook of the farmer. Cheap credit meant only 
that the farmer got more deeply into debt. 

Early in this century attention was directed to the 
plan of co-operative credit developed with such success 
in South Germany by Raiffeisen. The central idea was 
that all the farmers in a village should form a co- 
operative credit society and should borrow on the 
credit of the whole society. Since liability was unlim- 
ited, the whole village became a vigilance association to 
keep an eye on each villager, not only on his farming 
operations but on his private life. 

The condition of the Indian farmer, often deplorable 
enough when he belongs to the hereditary farmer caste, 
is infinitely worse when he is an outcast of the outcast, 
on the lowest rung of the long ladder of Indian social 
and religious precedence. Many of the Christians of 
Jalna (in the Nizam’s Dominions) had come from the 
lowly Mang caste. Their inherited character was such 
as might be expected after being treated by the Hindus 
for millennia with a contempt and an insolence hardly 
conceivable to the Western mind. As Mangs they had 


68 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


made their living by beating the drum in Hindu re- 
ligious processions. ‘The question whether as Christians 
they could continue to earn their living in this way, 
agitated for a time the church to which they belonged. 
The arguments used on both sides strongly resembled 
the arguments used, when a Christian church was first 
started in Corinth, on the legitimacy of Christians 
eating food that had been offered to idols. At last the 
Jalna Christians solved the problem by voluntarily 
abandoning their hereditary occupation. 

Still, they had to live somehow. Long before, an 
attempt had been made to turn the community into 
farmers. Little success resulted, and the difficulties 
seemed insurmountable, till co-operative credit came 
like an evangel which would put new heart into sorely 
tried men and turn them into a community of self- 
respecting citizens. In 1920 Tom Dobson, who, as 
manager of the Mission Printing Press in Poona, had 
already shown himself possessed of a singular combina- 
tion of gifts, was appointed manager of the Jalna 
Co-operative Credit Bank. Among the most inspiring 
stories in recent missionary biography is the account 
of the gallant struggle he made with every resource of 
his great personality for the people whose cause he had 
made his own. He fought against the all but invincible 
odds of inherited “shiftlessness,’’ distrust, and an ex- 
traordinary succession of bad seasons, until, in the 
fulness of his powers and at what seemed the dawning 
of a better day, he fell a victim to the knife of an as- 
sassin.1 


4. Preparation for the Gospel. 
Yet the missionary is never just a philanthropist; and 
many of those who heartily sympathize with most of 
1Tom Dobson, by Nicol MacNicol (Hodder & Stoughton). 


THE MISSIONARY AIM 69 


these items of his activities, view with indifference or 
even hostility the final aim toward which the mission- 
ary conceives all these lines of effort to lead. To bor- 
row metaphors from the parable of the sower, the edu- 
cational, medical, industrial, and general social work of 
the church is of the nature of plowing the hard soil, of 
digging up rock, of rooting out noxious weeds, in prepa- 
ration for the coming of a new and richer life. To quote 
again the saying of Jesus that was somehow missed by 
those who collected his sayings for our Gospels, “it is 
more blessed to give than to receive.”’... That is as true 
of the helped as it is of the helper. Philanthropy is 
superficial except in so far as it is creating philanthro- 
pists. The Samaritan’s work is unfinished until the 
wounded traveller has caught something of the spirit of 
the Samaritan.’ Is there any motive other than the 
religious through which the manifold activities of the 
church can become something other than salvage work, 
which can make of them redemptive and creative 
agencies ? 


5. Establishing a Christian Church. 


~ While, then, much of the social and educational work 
of the church beyond her own borders is worth doing for 
its own sake, it is not in fact done for its own sake. 
One primary aim is to lead men and women to the 
Christian “ways! But from the beginning one of the 
distinguishing marks of the follower of Jesus was that 
he was a member of a fellowship. The Christians were 
“the brothers.’’ The Christian church was from the 
beginning a community of men and women who had 
one Lord, one faith, one baptism; giving thanks to 
the one God for the same salvation, sustaining their 
souls on the same bread of life, filled with one hope for 
the future, and using their spiritual gifts for the common 


70 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


weal. As it was in the beginning, so it is to-day. 
Until in each country in which the Gospel is lived and 
preached, men and women of “the way” are formed 
into a “body” in which the life of each is the life of all 
and the service of each is the service of all, the mission- 
ary is only at the beginning of his task. On the other 
hand, when in any country there is a Christian church 
strong enough, under divine guidance, to nurture its 
own life, to shape its own ideals, and carry out its own 
programme of expansion, then, while the missionary’s 
task may not be finished, at least the church is no longer 
a mission church. There is indeed a good deal to be said 
for the view that, in many parts of the non-Christian | 
world, the time has come for the representatives of the 
Western churches to concentrate on the education of 
the Christian community, on the preservation and ele- 
vation of Christian ideals, and on such a training for 
the young as will make possible homes in which the 
Christian life may be lived with a beauty and power 
that will lead others to seek the source whence they- 
come. 


6. Time Required for the Development of the Chris- 
tian Spirit. 

In this work we learn by experience, what we might 
have learned from a study of our Bibles, that spiritual 
life is a growth. We are now familiar with the view that 
in the Bible we have the story of the evolution of a re- 

ligion, a gradual progress from primitive views of God 
and man and their mutual relations to more spiritual 
views, until we reach the philosophic Christianity of 
the later books of the New Testament. Yet, in spite of 
the parables of the leaven and the mustard seed and 
the sower, we sometimes expect backward peoples of 
our own day to go through in a generation an intellec- 


THE MISSIONARY AIM 71 


tual, ethical, and religious development which among 
the Jews occupied centuries. A leading authority on 
economics estimates that several generations are re- 
quired to train a nation to the use of machinery. While 
the rapidity with which the Christian spirit moulds anew 
the lives of those who submit to its working has always 
been one of the miracles of Christianity, yet the Chris- 
tian handling of life is an art at least as delicate and as 
difficult to acquire in its completeness as the manipu- 
lation of machinery. Patience is a favorite virtue of the 
New Testament teachers; and the church has need of 
patience in waiting for the slowly ripening fruits of 
much of her work among non-Christian peoples. 

It is almost amusing to note how some commentators 
on the New Testament assume that a young church is 
an enthusiastic church, with an unusually high level of 
moral conduct. In discussions, for example, of the 
date of the Epistle of James, the apparent lukewarmness 
of the recipients of the letter, and the serious moral 
lapses supposed to be implied by the author, have been 
taken as evidence that the church had been in existence 
long enough to lose the fervor of its first love. But 
neither the New Testament records nor modern mis- 
sionary experience confirms the view that a church is 
ethically most efficient and spiritually most sensitive 
in the first years of its existence. 


Vill 
THE MISSIONARY MOTIVE 


In the previous chapter we have tried to answer the 
question what it is that the church is trying to do when 
she carries the Christian message to non-Christian 
countries. It would, however, be a mistake to suppose 
that this aim is the conscious motive of all who take 
part in the work. The missionary cause is sometimes 
‘argued on grounds that are anything but spiritual, and 
even among those who have the loftiest conception of 
what evangelization means, different aspects of the 
work appeal with different degrees of force. 


I. The Commercial Motive. 


It is still necessary in certain quarters to protest 
against the view that the missionary, however unin- 
tentionally and even unconsciously, is a tout for the 
business and the commercial interests of the country to 
which he belongs. Dennis, in his Modern Call of Mis- 
sions, quotes a saying of Charles Denby, who was for 
many years American ambassador in China: “If the 
missionary promotes civilization, he also promotes 
trade.’ He also refers to a pronouncement of Henry 
Venn, a distinguished secretary of the Church Mis- 
sionary Society more than half a century ago: “When 
a missionary had been abroad twenty years, he was 
worth £10,000 a year to British commerce.” Such 
appeals to cupidity are perhaps not now made quite 
so blatantly by responsible authorities, but there are 
still men who believe that the most effective argument 
for missions is the return they bring in dollars and dimes. 

72 


THE MISSIONARY MOTIVE 73 


It cannot be repeated too often or too emphatically 
that if the missionary has any commercial value to the 
country of his birth, the less said about it the better. © 
The Oriental is already sufficiently inclined to be scepti- 
cal of the motives of those who come to do him good. 
Whatever other charges may be brought against the 
missionary, few will accuse him of being inspired by self- 
interest in the choice of his life’s work. We cannot dep- 
recate too strongly every attempt to make the support 
of the missionary dependent on the hope of pecuniary 
gain. 


2. Political Aggrandizement as a Missionary Motive. 


Hardly more dignified is the appeal to the love of 
political aggrandizement. It would not be difficult 
to show that Christian missions have paved the way 
for large extensions of empire, especially of the British 
Empire; that they have greatly assisted in the work of 
consolidating that empire and keeping it intact. In 
particular, educational and medical missions have done 
more perhaps than any other single factor to soften 
the acerbities of racial and color difficulties, and to 
bridge the gulf of political inequality. It has been re- 
marked that it is easier for teachers, even when they 
are government officials, to transcend political and 
racial differences, than for almost any other class of 
government officers. Schools and colleges ought to be, 
and often are, among the most democratic of all insti- 
tutions; and the common pursuit of common aims in 
the things of the mind and the spirit helps teachers and 
pupils to forget the things that separate them. Still 
more is this true where the dignities and responsibilities 
of government service are absent. 

Perhaps the imperial possibilities of missions have 
never been better illustrated than in the story told in 


74 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


Laws of Livingstonia of the annexation of Ngoniland. 
It was won for the British Empire, neither by the sol- 
dier, nor by the administrator, nor by the explorer, but 
by the missionary. Sir Alfred Sharpe, Commissioner 
of Nyasaland, put absolute confidence in the judgment 
of Doctor Laws about the precise moment when the 
country was ripe for annexation. On receipt of a letter 
from Doctor Laws, the commissioner “did a thing 
surely unparalleled in the story of British colonization. — 
He went up into the wilds of Ngoniland to annex the 
country, unattended by the military, and taking only 
his wife with him.’ On September 2, 1904, the day 
fixed for the great palaver with the native chiefs, “‘the 
Ngoni gathered in their thousands, chiefs and indunas 
and fighting men, with spears and shields, the proudest 
and most warlike people in Central Africa, and the com- 
missioner walked into their midst to take away their 
independence, with all the implication which that in- 
volved—the surrender of their old care-free life, the 
submission to outside authority, the imposition of taxa- 
tion—and he was alone. The few soldiers he had 
brought with him as a matter of form mingled, unarmed, 
with the spectators.” 

A mission teacher acted as an interpreter; and after 
a long palaver, with many explanations asked and pa- 
tiently and tactfully given, without the firing of a single 
shot and with the good will of the “wild Ngoni,” by the 
setting of the sun Ngoniland had been added to the 
British Empire. The commissioner gratefully acknowl- 
edged his great indebtedness to Doctor Laws and the 
other missionaries.! 
» While all this is true, it should form no element in 
the missionary appeal, conscious or unconscious. The 
Christian who understands what spirit he is of, could 

1P, 314 ff. 


THE MISSIONARY MOTIVE 75 


no more urge men to support the foreign enterprise of 
the church on the ground that it extends their country’s 
influence and power than he could urge his friends to 
take office in the church as a piece of good business 
advertising. Paul was very “correct” in his relations 
to the government of the day, but the first Christians, 
like their Master, were sometimes branded as revolu- 
tionaries; and imagination fails to picture Paul preach- 
ing Christ and him crucified with one eye on the progress 
of the flag. He moved in another region of thought. 


3. True Christianity Upholds National Loyalty. 


Christians everywhere will protest against immoral 
customs, and will refuse to obey government laws 
where these bring them into direct conflict with essen- 
tial principles of their religion. Thus, Christians of the 
third century preferred to suffer death rather than obey 
the imperial command to pay divine honors to Roman 
emperors. Yet loyalty to the government of one’s 
country was taught by Jesus himself, by Paul, and by 
the author of I Peter. Part of the motive of Acts 
was to prove to Theophilus, who may have been con- 
nected in some way with the Roman government, that 
the Christians were law-abiding subjects, and that 
the Roman officials, far from regarding them as rebels, 
had repeatedly intervened to protect the Christian 
missionaries. 

The same testimony could be given in our own day. 
It was one of the findings of the World Missionary 
Conference held in London (1910) that “‘wherever the 
ruling power is performing, even imperfectly, its pri- 
mary duties of keeping peace and administering some 
kind of justice between man and man, it has the active 
support of Christian missions. From Japan, China, 
India, Africa, comes the claim that the Christian com- 


‘ 


76 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


munity, though often discouraged and sometimes perse- 
cuted, is the most law-abiding and loyal section of the 
community.” The intervening years have served only 
to underline this testimony, so far as both missionaries 
and native Christians are concerned. This is partly 
because Christianity is a religion of peace; partly be- 
cause the modern Christian shares the fear of the first 
Christians, that the new religion might be side-tracked 
on to some path of moral reform, that might lead to 
bloodshed and give an utterly distorted view of what 
Christianity stood for. ‘The feeling was common to 
the Christians of that day as also of this that our citi- 
zenship is in heaven; and that, in comparison with the 
things over which politicians squabble, the interests of 
the Kingdom are of infinite importance. But the politi- 
cal loyalty of the native Christians is to be ascribed 
also to this, that they are very receptive pupils of those 
who teach them that, in so far as they are citizens of 
any earthly country, it is in the first place of the coun- 
try in which they live. 


4.. Denominational Aggrandizement Unworthy as an 
Aim. 


A subtler temptation is to yield to the desire for 
ecclesiastical aggrandizement, to regard it as the end 
and aim of the enterprise that a certain number of 
people who call themselves Hindus, Buddhists, or 
Moslems should more or less conscientiously call them- 
selves Christians. There is a way of counting converts 
which irresistibly reminds us of the American Indian 
counting his scalps. This attitude is perhaps com- 
moner among those who view the work from afar than 
among those actually engaged in it. In so far as the 
latter fall victims, the cause is often to be found in home 
Boards that insist on statistics, and in home friends 


THE MISSIONARY MOTIVE 77 


who finance the work and judge the success of a mis- 
sion station by the same tests by which they would 
judge that of a department store. It is unnecessary to 
say that, to the missionary who has what the Epistle 
to the Hebrews calls the first elements of Christianity, 
this whole spirit is as revolting as it can be to any dis- 
passionate critic. 


5. The Jews Were Effective Missionaries. 


If we ask what was the missionary motive in New 
Testament times, we have to acknowledge that the 
question hardly seems to have arisen. The ground 
had been in a measure prepared by the proselytizing 
zeal of enthusiastic Jews. We know from the Gospel 
records, as well as from outside historical sources, that 
our Lord’s ministry covered part of a period when the 
Jews, perhaps in this untrue to the genius of their race 
and their religion, conducted a vigorous missionary 
propaganda, a propaganda which, so far as Palestinian 
Jews are concerned, seems to have largely collapsed 
with the fall of Jerusalem. 

The repellent picture which we get of the Pharisees 
in the Gospels, in particular, our Lord’s contemptu- 
ous reference to their missionary activities (Matthew 
23:15), together with the unpleasant associations of 
the word “proselyte,” makes it difficult for us to be 
quite fair to the missionary work of the Jews of the 
period. It is evident that in spite of the intolerance of 
the Jews, an intolerance in some respects entirely 
honorable, and even with the handicap of repellent 
religious customs such as circumcision, food tabus, 
and the consequent social exclusiveness, many of the 
finest spirits in the Roman Empire of the time were 
attracted by the Jewish creed and the Jewish worship, 
by its lofty spiritual conception of God, and the purity 


78 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


of its moral ideals. Many who were unwilling to take 
on the yoke of the whole law by becoming proselytes 
nevertheless kept up a more or less close connection 
with the synagogue and were known as “God-fearers.”’ 


6. The Apostolic Church Believed That Religion 
Should Be Shared. 


The Jews were thus familiar, as we have already seen, 
with the idea that religion was meant to be shared, 
before Jesus went on his preaching tours. Perhaps, 
however, we are not far from the truth when we say 
that the first Christians spread the gospel, not from 


any reasoned motive but because they could not help it. , 
They certainly wanted to save men from an impending” 


doom, however they may have conceived that doom; 
but still more they believed that God had spoken a 
final decisive word in Jesus, who was the Christ. They 
felt assured that the old order of things was passing 
away; that new powers were at work in the world, were 
at work in themselves; that if only men would repent 
and believe in Jesus, they would enter on the new, glad 
order of things and share in the new powers. They be- 
lieved that “‘bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,”’ and 
in the enthusiasm of their new-found joy, they became 
missionaries. 


7. Its Motive not the Relief of Pain nor the Allevia- 
tion of Poverty. 


In the scanty records that give us all the information 
we have, two points seem to stand out. The first mis- 
sionaries do not seem to have been moved in any appre- 
clable degree by the social or physical needs of the 
people among whom they worked. They healed the 
sick; but Paul, while he does not ignore this aspect of 
the work, gives to it in his extant epistles vastly less 


te, 


THE MISSIONARY MOTIVE 79 


attention than is given to the healing ministry of Jesus 
in the Gospels. There is no indication that the preva- 
lence of disease in the countries he visited formed any 
part.of the motive for his missionary tours. 

Paul was interested in the problem of poverty, and 
gave much time and thought to the question of ways 
and means of alleviating the (perhaps largely volun- 
tary) poverty of the Jerusalem Church. It is one of 
the curiosities of the literature he has left us that he 
- shows so little interest in the poverty of those outside 
the church. Paul’s work evidently lay largely among 
the poor of the big cities. It 1s quite certain that the 
alleviation of their poverty was not among his primary 
missionary aims. Doubtless, slaves and freedmen formed 
no inconsiderable portion of the membership of some 
of the first churches. Far from Paul starting an anti- 
slavery crusade, we are not quite certain that he ad- 
vised slaves to accept their freedom if they got the 
opportunity. 

In part this is explained by the consideration that, 
during much of his ministry, Paul was looking for a 
speedy end of the world and the return of Christ. But 
in part it means also that Paul’s thoughts belonged to 
a sphere where questions of health and money and social 
status were, comparatively speaking, irrelevant; he 
was dealing with bigger issues. This suggests the other 
point. 


8. Nor Primarily Moral Reform. 


If Paul and the other missionaries were not out to 
deal with problems of health or of poverty or of class 
distinctions, it would not be quite correct even to say 
that the issues they were concerned with were primarily 
ethical. The Christians had inherited from the Jewish 
prophets the teaching that God is a God of righteous- 


80 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


ness, that he cannot approve moral evil in any shape or 
form. Through the teaching and the life of Jesus, this 
truth had been burned into the minds of his followers, 
even the humblest of them, as perhaps it has never 
penetrated the minds of the devotees of any other 
religion. All through the New Testament, even in its 
most metaphysical sections, we are made to feel that 
to be a disciple of Jesus is in the first place to be a pure 
and upright man. We can never be sufficiently grate- 
ful that Paul especially saw this so clearly, lived it so 
strenuously, and insisted on it so pertinaciously. Yet 
Paul would never have agreed that he was simply try- 
ing to make men better. It was their salvation that he 
sought; to save a soul was something bigger than to 
reform a character. Like the writer “‘To the Hebrews,” 
he sought to lead men to God through Jesus; like him, 
he lived in a world of unseen realities and worked for 
_ the eternal. 


9. The Conception of Christianity as a Religion of 
Healing Came Later. 


At first, then, the missionary motive was not so much 
the needs of men, least of all their physical needs; but 
rather devotion to the risen Christ, zeal that the Cruci- 
fied should be glorified. It was at a later stage, as the 
earthly ministry of Jesus receded further and further 
into the past, that his followers began to be moved by 
the sorrows and sufferings of men, to realize in their 
own experience the truth that what they did to the 
humblest of the brethren of the Lord they did to the 
Lord himself. Christianity became explicitly, what it 
had always been implicitly, a religion of healing, for 
body and for soul. Later still, zealous Christians began 
to think of salvation in terms of the nation rather than 
of the individual, and the phenomenon of national 


THE MISSIONARY MOTIVE 81 


conversion began to appear. Along with this went the 
feeling that the primary missionary aim was not so 
much the glory of Christ as the glory of the church of 
Christ. 


to. Deliverance from Eternal Punishment as a Mis- 
sionary Motive. 

Within the lifetime of some who are not yet al it 
was customary to appeal for missionaries in order to 
“save souls from hell,” the idea being that the people 
of the “heathen”’ world were “going down,” as it was 
phrased, to an eternity of physical torture, particulars 
of which were given. If any ever went abroad as a result 
of such appeals, one cannot help wondering what im- 
pression of God and of the Gospel the yleft on the minds 
of those they sought to evangelize. t we must not 
rashly assume that this was ever the burden of the 
preaching of any generation of missionaries, at least 
of educated missionaries. Men are often better than 
their creed. A redeeming common sense—or shall we 
call it rather the grace of God ?—often prevents them 
from carrying to their logical conclusions the things 
they think they believe. There is an educational disci- 
pline also in contact with those whose eternal fate we 
so lightly decide. It is easy to consign to eternal torture 
unknown and hardly imaginable “‘heathen’’; it is not 
so easy thus to dispose of our faithful domestic, or of 
our partner or opponent in many a game of lawn tennis, 
or of the lawyer who has so often freely placed his legal 
knowledge at our disposal. 

This kind of appeal is seldom now heard among the 
educated. It had this immense advantage that those 
who made the appeal and those who listened to it alike 
knew exactly what they were trying to do, and had the 
most urgent reason for doing it as speedily and as 


82 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


expeditiously as possible. This note of urgency is 
characteristic of the missionary preaching of Jesus. Is 
it possible to retain it with the changed conception of 
_ the form of the missionary task that prevails in our day ? 
_ We now think less of saving the soul and more of saving 
_ the man or woman. There is a tendency to revert to 
medieval conceptions of national conversion, and great 
importance is attached to programmes that are, in 
the large sense of the word, educational. 

One could wish that contemporary missionary biog- 
raphers were sometimes more explicit on the aspects of 
the Christian message stressed by their heroes and 
their heroines, yet there is no lack of material to show 
the missionary motives believed to be effective in this 
generation. 


11. The Reform of Social Abuses a Permanent 
Missionary Task. 


At the beginning of this century, Doctor James S. 
Dennis published a book on Christian Missions and 
Social Progress. The first volume dwelt on the social 
evils of the non-Christian world: on the vices of indi- 
viduals, such as intemperance, gambling, self-torture, 
suicide, and sexual vice; on family social evils, espe- 
cially the degradation of women, polygamy and con- 
cubinage, child marriage and widowhood, adultery 
and divorce, and infanticide; on tribal social abuses, 
such as the slave trade, cannibalism, human sacrifice, 
cruel ordeals, inhuman punishments, and torture; on 
general social evils, such as ignorance, quackery, witch- 
craft, and neglect of the poor and the sick. Next were 
discussed political injustice and civil tyranny, cor- 
ruption and bribery, massacre and pillage, low stand- 
ards of commercial morality, and the moral scandals, 
superstitions, and cruelties of the non-Christian re- 


THE MISSIONARY MOTIVE 83 


ligions. In the second and third volumes the author 
went on to show how Christianity introduces new social 
ideals and, at least to some extent, carries them into 
practice. 

These volumes by Doctor Dennis represent not un- 
fairly the line of approach by which officials of mis- 
sionary societies try to bring home to the rank and file 
of church members their responsibility for the non- 
Christian world. It cannot always be assumed that 
the missionary task, as presented to the home churches, 
represents the whole of that task as conceived by the 
missionaries. Thus we are told that so great a mission- 
ary as Doctor Duff, who was largely responsible for the 
extent to which higher education is used as a missionary 
method in India, in presenting the claims of the work 
to congregations in Scotland dwelt rather on the con- 
version of individuals as the motive, presumably be- 
cause he believed the church was not yet ready for his 
more statesmanlike conception of the work to be done. 
Yet an account, such as we have already given, of the 
actual varied activities of contemporary missionaries 
suggests that for them the call of the non-Christian 
world is, in one aspect, a call to come in the spirit of 
the physician to deal with the sores of “‘heathendom”’ 
that Doctor Dennis enumerates. 


12. The Missionary Motive in Modern Missionary 
Biography. 


Again, missionary biography, even when there is no 
explicit inquiry into the missionary motive, does give 
us in some measure the point of view both of the biog- 
rapher and of the subject of his study. We think of 
African biographies like those of Mary Slessor and 
Doctor Laws. These tell us of parts of the world in 


84 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


which, when the missionary first saw them, life was one 
awiul welter of ignorance and suffering, cruelty and 
lust; where nature, red in tooth and claw, was hardly 
less cruel than man; and the whole life, animate and 
inanimate, seemed crying out for redemption. 

We turn to that accomplished scholar, musician, and 
missionary, Albert Schweitzer. Of all Africa’s needs, it 
was her physical suffering that most appealed to him; 
especially the untold suffering that could be avoided or 
ended by a few simple drugs or a simple operation. 
Few even among missionaries can have given up a 
career so promising as did Doctor Schweitzer when, in 
response to the call of Africa, he partially abandoned 
the New Testament studies in which he had made for 
himself a name so brilliant, and began to qualify him- 
self as a medical missionary. In On the Edge of the 
Primeval Forest, in moving words, he tries to make 
others feel the force of the conviction that sent him to 
Africa, that all we can do to alleviate the untold pain 
of the dwellers in that continent is but the beginning of 
our payment for all we have made Africa suffer. But 
though he does not dwell much on this thought, the 
spirit of the Master that breathes through his pages 
makes us realize that what Africa needs is not the 
physician but the Christian physician. 

In China, pastor Tsi dealt much with the saving of 
souls in the old sense; but of the concrete forms in 
which his problem presented itself to his mind, two 
stood out in relief, one being the number of victims of 
the opium habit who sought in vain for deliverance; the 
other, gambling, which in China assumes epidemic pro- 
portions. To many Indian missionaries it would seem 
that their immediate task is to deal with the unbrother- 
liness of caste, the degrading conceptions of God in- 
volved in many forms of idol-worship, the pessimistic 


THE MISSIONARY MOTIVE 85 


outlook on life and the divorce of morality from a 
ritualistic religion. 


13. Changing Conceptions of Salvation. 


As a description of the missionary motive, any phrase 
including the New Testament word “‘salvation”’ seems 
to be somewhat out of favor at present, doubtless be- 
cause of its association with a system of theology that 
has lost its grip on what is called the modern mind. 
At least on a superficial view, it would seem as if con- 
ceptions of salvation frequently changed. The claim 
has even been made that not a single idea now con- 
nected with the word formed any part of its content 
in the first Christian century. That is the kind of ex- 
aggerated statement which at least helps to call our 
attention to a truth. Salvation always means deliver- 
ance from what we most dread. As our conception of 
the great enemy changes, naturally the content of the 
term “salvation”’ changes with it. 

The New Testament writers were not always very 
explicit about their hopes or their fears for men. We 
know that both Paul and the writer “To the Hebrews” 
were haunted by a fear that was driven out only by 
Christ, the fear of death; by which they meant some- 
thing more than physical death. What they had in 
mind was a destruction that was moral and spiritual 
as well as physical, a fear not only of passing away, 
though it was that too, but of what Paul calls “corrup- 
tion.” To the illiterate the fear will take the form of 
physical or semi-physical pains and penalties beyond 
the grave. To some “salvation” involves the perma- 
nence of all that is worthy in the individual personality; 
others think of it in terms of the nation or the race. 
To Paul, the ideal in life or in death was to know 
Christ. To the enlightened Christian mind, eternal 


86 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


life is to know God and Jesus Christ, whom he has 
sent. 

The social and humanitarian motives that prevail 
in so much religious work to-day are a reaction, an 
altogether healthy reaction, from an age of comparative 
indifference to the claims of kindliness or even of social 
justice; to the Christian call for consideration for the 
weak, the suffering, and the defenceless. Yet throughout 
the ministry of Jesus, the primary note in his teaching 
was the call to repentance. We tend to strain after the 
physical basis of comfort for ourselves and others, hop- 
ing that somehow the Kingdom of God will be added to 
our comforts. Jesus put the Kingdom and our comforts 
in the inverse order. His mission was to lead to God 
men whose origin and destiny was God. Work which 
has a more transient impulse than this is not, in the 
historic sense, Christian missionary work. . 


IX 


INEVITABLE HANDICAPS IN MISSIONARY 
WORK 


The astonishing success of Christianity in moulding 
to its ways of thought and life the peoples it has sought 
to influence, has been achieved in spite of certain 
handicaps, which go far to explain those cases where 
the response to its approach has been less definite and 
more reluctant than might reasonably have been 
anticipated. Some of the difficulties that beset the for- 
ward march of Christianity are inherent in the nature 
of the religion and the conditions under which it works; 
for others the church or the missionary is responsible. 
Let us look first at the inevitable handicaps under 
which the mission work of Christianity is done. 


1. Christian Influences Part of an Amalgam. 


In the first place, the seed of Christian truth is 
seldom allowed to develop its proper fruit without the 
interference of hostile influences. The Gospel message 
does not work in isolation; with the sower of wheat goes 
the sower of darnel. The total impression which the 
Christian world makes on the non-Christian is a com- 
posite impression produced by the working of Western 
ideals, not only in religion but also in trade and com- 
merce, in industry and politics, in military affairs, in 
social life, in literature, in sport and amusement. In 
some measure this is an asset. The high sense of re- 
sponsibility, the integrity and justice, the courage and 
spirit of self-sacrificing service that inspire so much of 
the white man’s work for the non-Christian world are 

87 


88 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


a useful commentary on the stress that Christianity 
always lays on character. 

Yet there is much to be said on the other side. The 
non-Christian notices the large number of cases in 
which the white man shows no apparent interest in the 
religion he nominally professes. He is more puzzled 
by this fact than the Westerner, and can hardly be 
expected to recognize the extent to which the ethic of 
_ the least religious white man is derived from Christian 
tradition. 


2. The Influence of Western Economic Systems. 


Few would suggest that the social and economic 
systems of the West are concrete embodiments of the 
principles that Jesus taught; nor is the malign influence 
of the uglier sides of Western civilization confined to 
that which is exercised directly by such of its institu- 
tions as the non-Christian sees in operation. It is 
quite common to-day, perhaps chiefly in the Moham- 
medan world, for non-Christian newspapers to report 
and make unfavorable comments on such incidents 
in the Western world as can be made to point the 
moral that “Christianity has failed.’’ Why the Chris- 
tian spirit does not dominate, to a greater extent than 
it does, a civilization that is nominally Christian, is a 
question that the Christian cannot ultimately evade. In 
the meantime we simply note the point so often over- 
looked, that the church in her foreign enterprise suffers 
from this heavy handicap, that her distinctive message 
is presented as part of an amalgam which contains 
many elements indifferent or hostile to the Christian 
spirit. 

The selfishness which is so commonly assumed as the 
governing principle in modern trade and industry, the 
relations of white men and colored women, the story 


HANDICAPS IN MISSIONARY WORK 89 


of the Indian opium export trade to China, and the 
scandalous traffic with the backward races in British 
intoxicating liquor, lend support to the constantly 
reiterated belief of the Oriental that the West is ma- 
terialistic while the East is spiritual. 


3- The Influence of Western Caste Systems. 

Some features of “white” life seem to strike the 
Oriental as in peculiarly flagrant contradiction to the 
religion that the missionary teaches. One of the aston- 
ishing discoveries of the first generation of Christians 
was that God is no respecter of persons. As we shall 
see, the Hindu is greatly impressed with the extent to 
which in theory, and even largely in practice, the former 
caste distinctions of converts are forgotten in the 
Christian churches. Yet the non-Christian is well 
aware that the Westerner has his own more or less rigid 
social grades; sometimes, as among the Europeans of 
India, hardly distinguishable from caste divisions. He 
would be even more impressed with the fact, if he 
realized the extent to which questions of social prece- 
dence are given prominence even in the house of God. 
It is claimed for the Mohammedan, perhaps with some 
measure of truth, that while he denies zn toto the doc- 
trine of the brotherhood of man, within Islam itself he 
recognizes in the most practical way the social equality 
of all followers of the prophet, whatever their color, 
and that in the mosque even the Nawab ! is only one 
of the band of worshipping brothers. 


4. The Influence of Western Race Feeling. 

It is a Christian axiom that God has made of one 
blood men of all nations; the first Christians were a 
brotherhood in name and in reality; in Christ Jesus, 


1 The chief of the state in some Indian principalities. 


90 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


according to Paul, all our adventitious distinctions of 
sex, race, and culture are transcended. Yet it is obvious 
to the non-Christian that, speaking generally, every 
white man regards every colored man as a creature of 
a lower species, quite independently of his actual worth 
or achievements; and even in the Christian church, 
some of the hardest problems that face us to-day 
are connected with race questions. 


5. The Influence of Western Belief in Force. 


Perhaps no part of the teaching of Jesus makes a 
deeper impression on the non-Christian than the so- 
called “‘non-resistance”’ passages in the Sermon on the 
Mount; to him the Christian is pre-eminently the man 
who would rather suffer wrong than do wrong. Yet in 
his experience, the nations that call themselves Chris- 
tian are just as ready as others to rely on the strong 
arm; nor Is it easy to persuade him that our armed forces 
are always employed in a spirit of lofty chivalry or even 
of justice; while in private life the Christians he knows 
are not always remarkable for turning the other cheek. 

One may grant that in this regard, no small part of 
the real handicap under which Christianity lies is the 
figurative and even paradoxical language in which Jesus 
sometimes expressed his ethical precepts. The fact 
remains that, even after making all due allowance for 
Oriental metaphor, Jesus pointed his followers to an 
altruistic way of life which, in their national afiairs and 
to a large extent even in their private concerns, many of 
them profess to find impracticable. 


6. The Influence of Western Political Domination. 
The position has been further complicated by the 

fact that the pioneers of the Christian movement in 

non-Christian lands have usually been members of the 


HANDICAPS IN MISSIONARY WORK 91 


white races which, in recent times, have dominated 
the world politically. Latterly at least, white tutelage 
of the colored races has been viewed by the latter with 
increasing disfavor. One result of this state of things is 
that, in a large part of the non-Christian world, the 
mind of the youth, especially the educated youth, is 
obsessed with questions of politics. This is pre-emi- 
nently so in India. Faced with grave moral and social 
problems which they and they alone can solve, India’s 
young men for the most part refuse to touch them. 
The political issue, they say, is paramount; first let 
political independence be achieved; all other questions, 
however important, can wait. That Christianity is the 
religion of the white man may at one time have pre- 
possessed the colored man in its favor; if that claim can 
still be made, at least it is with much diminished confi- 
dence. 


7. Christianity Regarded as the White Man’s Re- 
ligion. 

Not only does Christianity go to the colored world 
as an exotic and as the white man’s religion; but, no 
doubt largely because it is the white man’s religion and 
comes clad in a Western dress, the process of acclimati- 
zation has been attended with considerable difficulty 
both in the East and in Africa. Several of the principal 
religions of China have reached her from other coun- 
tries; but Christianity is said to be the only religion 
for which the epithet “foreign” is specially reserved. 
In India, while the extent to which the creed, life, and 
worship of the Christian Church are Western has been 
greatly exaggerated, yet an indigenous Christianity 
which will appeal to the Hindu and the Mussulman as 
an Indian religion is only now beginning to take root. 

Not only does the foreignness of the Christian organi- 


92 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


zation disguise the true nature of its message, but the 
foreignness of the missionary complicates his relations 
with the “native” Christians. Judged by the standards 
of the European community of which he is a member, 
he is a poor man; but, poor as he is, he is a prince in 
comparison with most of his converts. He usually 
lives in a house which seems to them palatial; his dress, 
the kind of food he eats, his table manners, and general 
habits of life, are all calculated to create the impression 
of a gulf between him and his native colleagues and 
converts. He is increasingly conscious of this racial 
gulf; perhaps is even in a mood to emphasize and ex- 
aggerate it. 

Nor is it possible for the missionary altogether to 
overcome the difficulty by any external adaptation to 
his environment. In China it seems to be much less 
common than formerly for missionaries to adopt the 
native dress; in India, except in the case of the Salva- 
tion Army, this has not been the practice. A fondness 
for pungent curries may help to endear the missionary 
to his Indian brother; but, whatever he wears or eats, 
the white man, for good or evil, remains obviously 
_ white and foreign. The Oriental knows very well 
' whether the white man regards him as a “native” or 
asaman. It isa testimony to the good sense and Chris- 
tian feeling of both sides that, until recently, the some- 
what anomalous position proved so little of a barrier 
to friendly relations. 


8. The Inability of Christianity to Make Moral Com- 

- promises. 

' But perhaps the chief discouragement to the accept- 
ance of Christianity comes from its inability to make 
compromises on moral questions. The Gospel comes 
now, as always, bringing deliverance to the captive 


HANDICAPS IN MISSIONARY WORK 93 


and recovering of sight to the blind; striking off shackles 
and calling on the lame to rise and walk. But it comes 
also with its old insistence on the strait road and the 
narrow door. It is not only for the caste Hindu that 
loyalty to the Gospel summons involves the cutting off 
of a right hand or the gouging out of a right eye. In 
all countries there are those who hear the “Sell all that 
thou hast,’’ and who go away crestfallen because they 
have great possessions. 

Apart from these stern initial choices, the Gospel de- 
mands are hard. To lay aside one’s birthright of in- 
herited privilege, to eat with the common or unclean, 
to practise scrupulous honesty and sobriety, sexual 
purity and monogamy—perhaps only those who have 
been brought up in an atmosphere where no such de- 
mands are made can quite realize what these things 
mean. Would Mohammedanism have swept sections 
of Africa as it has done, if it had not sanctioned po- 
lygamy, the subjection of woman, and the insistence 
on sex as her principal function ? 

Christianity from the first has stood for moral and 
especially for sexual purity. The ascetic ideals which 
so early began to prevail in the church, and which 
played so large a part in the ecclesiastical life of the 
Middle Ages, were, at least in part, the revolt of men 
and women who had been touched with the Christian 
spirit, against the immorality they saw all around them. 
The same Gospels that tell us how the message of 
Jesus came like an emancipating word to the tax- 
gatherers, the “sinners,” the outcasts, tell us also of 
Jesus’ searching demand for purity; purity not only of 
life but of motive, of thought, of look. They narrate 
Jesus’ judgment on divorce, his insistence on the divine 
conception of marriage. In them we read of men who, 
when they followed Jesus, were called on to ignore even 


94 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


the dearest of human ties and the most prized of human 
gifts in their search for the one thing that counts in 


God’s sight. 


9. The Attitude of Christianity Toward Polygamous 
Converts. 


However great may be the temptation at times to 
open the door a little wider, to make the road a little 
broader, to meet the difficulties of aspirants to disciple- 
ship, to provide relief for what may seem to be almost 
unendurable cases of hardship, the church learns 
afresh, sometimes by painful experience, that the way 
of compromise with moral wrong is never the Christian 
way. In every mission field where polygamy is prac- 
tised by non-Christians, difficult questions arise about 
the reception into the church of polygamous converts. 
Is the convert to be compelled to part from all his wives 
except one, and, if so, which one? Perplexing as the 
question is when the wives are not willing to follow 
their husband into the Christian church, it is perhaps 
even more baffling when they are. 

Perhaps there is hardly any important question of 
ecclesiastical polity where we have suffered more from 
our almost total exclusion of women from the councils 
of the church. Discussion has proceeded almost entirely 
on considerations of expediency, of the hardship of 
this course or that for the man or the woman, of the 
exegesis, usually the absurd exegesis, of certain texts 
of Scripture. We have seldom heard any reference to 
the moral effects of polygamy on the man. Moreover, 
it is constantly assumed that the woman will prefer to 
continue in the marriage rather than occupy the am- 
biguous position of a discarded wife. Is there no possi- 
bility that a “‘native” wife, who had come under the 
influence of lady missionaries, would acquire such a dis- 


HANDICAPS IN MISSIONARY WORK 95 


taste for the position of a fractional wife that almost 
any alternative would seem to her preferable? At 
least, it is a question which an assembly composed of 
men is not qualified to answer. 

The problem is not so very serious where only spo- 
radic cases occur. In mission fields where polygamy is 
wide-spread and Christianity is increasingly popular, 
the church has to recognize, or to learn at a price, that 
the hard way may be the right way. If polygamy is 
ever under any pretext sanctioned in the church, men 
of high social standing can always be trusted to insist 
that their case comes under the exception and not 
under the rule. In any case, the spectacle presented to 
the young of polygamists being welcomed as members 
of the church, must give a distorted impression of 
Christian teaching such as no argument can efface. 


xX 
SELF-IMPOSED HINDRANCES TO MISSIONS 


Besides the inevitable handicaps that impede the 
church in her mission to those of other faiths, there are 
other burdens, which are self-imposed. The primary 
task of the missionary is to plant, in the new countries 
to which he goes, the germ of the new life. He is well 
aware that the young plant when it appears will, for a 
time, need careful nursing; for cold winds of indiffer- 
ence, hostility, or even persecution will blow upon it; 
while, in the absence of the inspiration that comes from 
a vigorous Christian society, it will suffer from drought. 
Sooner or later, however, the new plant will become 
acclimatized, will be able to dispense with hothouse 
methods, to live and to propagate itself without the 
gardener’s care. 


1. Missions a Temporary Phenomenon. 


Yet it is quite common to hear and to see appeals for 
missionary effort which seem to be based on the as- 
sumption that the missionary throughout is to be the 
moving spirit. We are given statistics of areas to be 
covered, the number of people to be won, and the terri- 
tory for which each mission is responsible. Sometimes, 
too, we are given figures of the number of missionaries 
required to cover the ground with any degree of thor- 
oughness. 

When Christian people remain unmoved by such 
appeals, as very generally they do, their indifference is 
doubtless explained in part by want of imagination; 
but is it not also due in part to the half-conscious 

96 


HINDRANCES TO MISSIONS 97 


realization that this is not how Christianity spreads as 
a matter of fact? Unless Christianity is to remain for- 
ever an exotic in any given country, the missionary 
and all his works are temporary phenomena in its his- 
tory. The time must come when the indigenous church 
and its individual members will realize the privilege 
and responsibility of passing on to their countrymen 
the message of the new way of life. 

The statistics to which reference has been made are 
not only depressing in themselves, but, by suggesting 
that the task is one of impossible magnitude, they are 
apt to discourage enthusiasm. If the work is all to be 
done by foreign churches, and is far beyond the actual 
capacity of the foreign churches, at least with their 
present standards, obviously there is a “‘catch”’ some- 
where. One has to grant that certain of the mission 
churches, notably those of India, have not, as yet, 
shown great capacity for self-propagation. For this, 
in the case of the Indian churches, there are various 
reasons. The Indian is not by nature an enthusiastic 
person, for which, in turn, the climate is partly re- 
sponsible. But perhaps the chief difficulty is that men, 
whose ancestors have for many centuries been members 
of a rigid caste system, lose in a measure the sense of 
individual responsibility and the capacity for individual 
initiative; though there is also the obvious considera- 
tion that the same causes that have made the mis- 
sionary task so difficult among caste Hindus have 
discouraged Indian Christians from seriously attempt- 
ing it. 

But may not the idea behind our missionary aims 
have, without any intention on our part, communicated 
itself to the Indian Christian mind: the idea, namely, 
that the work of pioneering, preparing, and organizing 
is always to be done by the foreign churches with which 


98 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


rests the final responsibility? It is true that neither the 
foreign church at the base, nor its representatives on 
the field, really think so; but they often speak as if they 
did. Missionaries are never tired of insisting that 
only the people of the country can effectively bring 
the Gospel message to their own countrymen; even in 
India, schemes of “devolution”’ as it is called, have been 
begun by which responsibility for evangelistic work is 
to be gradually transferred from the mission board to 
the indigenous church. It would be less depressing for 
mission interests and more encouraging for those among 
whom they work, if they emphasized more than they do 
that the whole conception of a “mission”’ is a transi- 
tional stage in the Christian history of any country. . 


2. Christianity’s Ecclesiastical Divisions. 


The hindrance caused by the ecclesiastical divisions 
of Christian people is less serious than might be sup- 
posed, and the harm they undoubtedly do is largely 
indirect. The acceptance of the principle of mutual 
delimitation of territory or of forms of work, and, in 
general, those friendly understandings between agencies 
that come under the general head of “comity of mis- 
sions,” have reduced to a minimum the scandal of rival 
organizations competing for converts in the same field; 
though it would be too optimistic to suggest that the 
spectacle is never to be seen. In spite of this, to the 
non-Christian onlooker, one of the obvious facts of the 
Christian enterprise as he sees it, is that the organiza- 
tions which bring the message, when not actually hos- 
tile to each other or even rivals, are at least different; 
that they represent widely different forms, not only of 
the Christian creed and of Christian worship but 
even to some extent of the Christian life. 

This provides the non-Christian with the opportunity 


HINDRANCES TO MISSIONS 99 


of making depreciatory comparisons. The scandal of 
course is greatest where any denomination unchurches 
others, refuses to acknowledge their ministry or sacra- 
ments, and especially where Christians cannot freely 
and jointly participate in the church’s central act of 
worship. Even the Hindu can contrive to forget the 
proverbial fissiparous tendencies of his own religion 
as he looks at the multitude of Christian sects. 

The sectarianism of Protestantism complicates also 
the relation of the home churches to the young churches 
on the mission field. Some of these churches are de- 
veloping strongly nationalist tendencies and feel that 
the link that unites them to a church group in Europe or 
elsewhere abroad, has become more of a hindrance than 
a help. The work of cutting the official link that has 
bound the mother churches to the daughter churches, 
of establishing self-governing churches in the mission 
fields, and even of uniting various indigenous churches 
of different ecclesiastical antecedents, has already made 
striking progress. Even so, there is a strong feeling 
that the unifying process is being seriously hindered 
by the ecclesiastical traditions inherited from the West. 
Speaking generally, the young churches are far more 
ready for a great uniting movement than are the 
parent churches that have sponsored them. 

The “native”? Christians have shown a certain ten- 
dency to be very well pleased with themselves for their 
advanced attitude toward union and to feel a certain 
superiority over the older churches that prefer to re- 
main apart. We shall have to wait for some generations 
or even for centuries before we know whether these 
feelings are justified. They are inclined to forget that it 
is easy for them to transcend the differences of creed, 
forms of worship and church government that have 
split the church in the West, since historically these 


100 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


differences mean nothing to them. What seems to the 
impartial outsider nothing but schism is often to 
those who view it from the inside a precious heritage, 
bound up with sacred memories of prophet and saint 
and martyr. God grant that the new churches may 
profit by the sad experience of the older churches! 
Time will tell. They are at least entitled to claim that, 
if differences are to arise, they should be their own 
differences and not ours. In the meantime our church 
divisions, if Christian good-will has shorn them of part 
of their power to do evil, are a real hindrance to the 
church in its relations both to non-Christians and to 
converts. 


3. An Excessive Reliance on Organization. 


Again, in this branch of the work of the church, have 
we not in some measure fallen victims to the twentieth 
century temptation to trust to money, machinery, and 
programmes, rather than to the power of the living 
spirit? When the report of the World Missionary Con- 
ference at Edinburgh in 1910 was published, one of 
the strongest impressions left on the mind from the 
perusal of it was that in this century every one is to 
be organized into the Kingdom. We recognize that, 
almost from the beginning, questions of organization 
and finance pressed on the churches; and that, when 
the creative days were past, it was not only inevitable 
but was of great advantage that organization, creeds, 
and officials should arise to conserve what had been won 
by men on fire with the spirit of God. 

Have we not tended in our foreign mission work to 
omit this creative period and to proceed directly to the 
later organizing stage? We know that some measure 
of organization is always needed, that under the present 
system harassed secretaries and treasurers have to ‘ut 

ON ha 








HINDRANCES TO MISSIONS 101 


find money somewhere, and that, as things are to-day, 
advertising is a key that unlocks many doors. We are 
prepared to try to believe that even statistical reports, 
however little they may be read and however much 
soul-destroying work may go into the preparation of 
them, may have some useful function to perform in the 
work of bringing to men the gospel of life. We realize 
that, while prayer is work, it can never quite take the 
place of other work. Yet when we read the Gospels 
and the Acts of the Apostles, read of the new life that 
was visibly pulsing in the world when organization was 
at a minimum, it is difficult to resist the impression © 
that too much is made of the machine, and too little | 
of the divine power which will always work with us | 
when we allow ourselves to work with it, when our 
efforts are in co-operation with and not in substitution 
for the power of God. 


4. The Christian Use of Military Metaphors. 


In this connection we have to ask ourselves whether 
we have not been too ready to employ military meta- 
phors. We grant that Paul was fond of military meta- 
phors; partly, perhaps, because in the course of his 
travels he was constantly brought into contact with the 
visible might of Rome, and realized the extent to which 
what men called greatness depended on military 
strength. To Jesus, on the other hand, working in the 
villages and country towns of Galilee, peaceful figures 
would more readily suggest themselves. The fact re- 
mains that no one, playing a prominent part in the 
public life of that day, could be ignorant of the part 
that armed force played in the Roman Empire. It 
was no mere accident that, when the Gadarene de- 
moniac wanted to express the resistless might of the 
demonic impulses within him, the image that occurred 


102 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


to him was that of the Roman legion. There is surely 
significance in the fact that Jesus hardly ever used 
metaphors borrowed from warfare and almost seems 
deliberately to have avoided them. 

This consideration is bound up with the fact, a curi- 
ous fact, as it seems to many, that Jesus seldom went 
beyond the confines of Jewry, and that his mission was 
in no sense a campaign against heathenism. When the 
question of other religious emerged, whether in the 
course of his own experience or as a subject of historical 
teaching, the one point he emphasized was that a saving 
faith in God often exists in quarters where the narrow- 
minded would least expect it. As Jesus did not in his 
thought divide men into rich and poor, cultured and 
ignorant, neither did he divide them into Jew and 
heathen. He saw men as God sees them, turning to the 
light that illumines every man or else blinding their 
eyes to the light. It is true that Jesus did conceive his 
work in one aspect of it as a warfare against Satan and 
his demonic hosts; but in so far as he sought to uproot 
all entrenched evil from the minds of men, the enemy 
was not heathenism but godlessness. 

The military metaphor is not so very misleading, if 
we do not half-consciously include among the enemies 
we contend against, not only religious and ethical 
systems that seem to lead men away from God, but 
even the human representatives of these systems. It 
is a lesson our own age needs much less than some of 
its predecessors. Doctor Fairweather! has recently 
been reminding us that “the good Dean Prideaux 
could still speak of Zoroaster as ‘this famous impostor’ 
and says of him and of Mahomet, ‘Both of them were 
very crafty knaves.’ And in general no milder epithets 


1 Jesus and the Greeks. 


HINDRANCES TO MISSIONS 103 


were applied to Buddha and Confucius.” We do not 
speak like that now. 

Yet our metaphors have a strange power over us; 
and our constant talk of “‘the home base,” “‘the for- 
eign field,” “the campaign,” of “strategic points,” of 
“triumphs” and “retreats,” may have a greater influ- 
ence than we know in putting us into a wrong relation 
to those we seek to influence. In this period of revul- 
sion against war and all that it stands for, would it 
not be possible in large measure to abandon our warlike 
language and to remember that our mission is to lead 
to God through Jesus Christ men and women in whose 
hearts the spirit of the Father God is already striving ? 


5. Emphasis on Non-Essentials. 


Another question is presenting itself with some in- 
sistence before the leaders in the Christian enterprise. 
Have we been inclined to stress the metaphysics of 
Christianity at the expense of its religious teaching? 
Have we tended to overestimate the importance of 
questions of literary criticism, theology, and philos- 
ophy, and to give to faith in God and the clean, un- 
selfish life a less central place than Jesus gave them? 
Whatever may be our answer to these questions, might 
we not, in our concern for what have been called the 
fundamental truths, make more explicit than we some- 
times do, that the fundamental thing in Christianity 
is that it seeks to lead men to God through Jesus Christ 
and to set before them the Christian way of life? The 
last of the documents that comprise our New Testament 
was written at the earliest toward the end of the first 
Christian century; the collected documents do not 
seem to have been recognized as a New Testament till 
toward the end of the second century. It is largely 


to the New Testament that we owe our knowledge of 


104 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


Jesus; but the message of God that speaks to us from 
the pages of the New Testament needs no artificial 
buttressing. Its authority resides in itself, not in any 
testimony that we can give to it. In defining the rela- 
tion of a Christian to the New Testament, we do well 
to ask ourselves, whether in our zeal for the Book and 
our gratitude for all we have learned from it, we are 
giving a definition that would exclude from the Chris- 
tian fellowship all the followers of Jesus mentioned in 
the New Testament? The worker on the frontiers of 
Christianity must be clear in his own mind whether a 
tendency to exalt the Book at the expense of the 
Person may not be a real temptation. 


6. Misunderstandings of Christian Teachings. 


It is very possible also, among a people who have not 
the background of our religious history, to teach the 
tenets of the Christian faith in a way that leads to 
serious misunderstanding. When the Moslem believes 
that we teach that Jesus is Son of God in a purely physi- 
cal sense, can we always absolve ourselves from all 
blame? On the subject of the Trinity, too, have we not 
tended to reverse the natural order of things? The 
doctrine of the Trinity was not primarily a product of 
the thought of any theologian, or of any body of theo- 
logians; 1t was an interpretation of an experience. 
Even before they knew Jesus, his first followers had all 
the Jew’s knowledge of God. Through direct contact 
with him, or through the preaching of the missionaries, 
they came to know God in Jesus. In the new life, the 
fruits of which they saw all around them and whose 
influence they themselves experienced, they saw a 
manifestation of God’s Holy Spirit. 

The experiences came first; the formulation of them 


into the doctrine of the Trinity came later. Is it possi- _ 


“= 


HINDRANCES TO MISSIONS 105 


ble for men who have never had this experience of the 
Trinity to reach any intelligent conception of what it 
means? Whatever may be the answer to that question 
and wherever the fault may lie, we seem to leave on the 
minds of many non-Christians the impression that 
the Christian believes in three Gods. 

Is the resurrection of Jesus ever taught in such a 
way as to obscure its central significance? The whole 
New Testament bears witness to the belief of the first 
generation of Christians that they were still in vital 
contact with Jesus, more vital and uninterrupted than 
had been possible in the days of his flesh; that his death 
had not removed him from them, but had brought 
them into the closest intimacy with him; that the 
fellowship of Christians with each other was a fellow- 
ship with the living Christ; and that the power that was 
making them new men, and through them making the 
world a new world, came from God through the risen 
Christ. Whatever else the resurrection may mean, 
surely this, and nothing less than this, is the burden of 
the New Testament teaching on the subject. 


7. The Essential Christian Message. 


We fully realize the impossibility of reproducing the 
simplicity of any past age; whether it be the simplicity 
of an ancient social, industrial, and political life, sup- 
posed to be happier than our own, or the simplicity of 
a primitive creed. We recognize also the folly of trying 
to separate the Christian ethic from the Christian re- 
ligion, or the Christian religion from Christian theology. 
In particular, the question of “the person of Christ”’ 
will arise and must be dealt with. If the teaching 
of Jesus were just one more guess at truth by one who 
had no more facility for reaching it than we have, then 


106 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


the strength of the Christian appeal would be immedi- 
ately weakened. 

While all this is so, there is a very real question 
whether, by a misplaced emphasis on even important 
items in the Christian creed, we do not at times obscure 
the light of the Light of the World, hide the beauty 
and the power that through the ages have won men’s 
hearts, forget and lead others to forget that the core 
of all Christian doctrine is that Jesus is the Way, the 
Truth, and the Life; that the text of all Christian 
preaching is: Let us draw near to God through Jesus 
Christ. 


xI 
THE ATTRACTIVE POWER OF CHRISTIANITY 


We sometimes speak vaguely of the power of Chris- 
tianity to attract to itself men of all races and of all 
religions. In practice, however, it was true in the early 
centuries, as it is to-day, that men were won, not by the 
Christian message in its completeness, but by some one 
aspect of it that made a special appeal to them in their 
particular circumstances. 


1. Its Teaching Regarding the Unity of God. 

It was a true Christian instinct that put in the fore- 
front of the creed, belief in God, the Father Almighty, 
Creator of all things visible and invisible. When 
Indian Buddhists deified the Buddha, in contradiction 
of his own teaching which denied the existence not only 
of God but of soul, they were only responding to the 
same instinct of the human heart which inspired 
Augustine to the prayer recorded on the first page of 
his Confessions: “Thou hast made us for thyself, and 
our hearts are restless till they rest in thee.” 

It may be the case that most polytheists concentrate 
their worship on one of the many gods in whose exist- 
ence they believe; it is the case that many of them be- 
lieve in the great Spirit behind and above all the gods 
that are its partial manifestations. Yet a house divided 
against itself cannot stand. One of the discoveries of 
modern psychology is that the mind is a unity, not«a 
number of faculties tied together as with a string. The 
belief that the world is at the mercy of powers, unco- 
ordinated or even hostile to each other, must have a 

107 


108 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


paralyzing effect on human endeavor. This accounts 
for the extraordinary enthusiasm with which mono- 
theists, like the Jews and the Mohammedans, hold and 
proclaim the belief that God is one, their mingled con- 
tempt for and fear of polytheism. If Christians do not 
always show the same militant joyousness in their 
assertion of the unity of God, the reason is to be found 
partly in the long centuries that have elapsed since 
Western Christendom had any direct experience of the 
blighting effects of polytheistic practice. Other items in 
the explanation are the ambiguity which belief in a 
personal Satan has introduced in so many minds into 
the Christian thought of God, and popular misconcep- 
tions of the meaning of the Trinity, which, while 
not exactly shaking men’s faith that God is One, at 
least diminish the confidence and clarity with which the 
truth is held. In the early centuries the message of 
Christianity that God is Spirit and that God is One, 
gave it an immense advantage in dealing with the 
puerilities of an idolatrous polytheism. 


2. Its Teaching of Fellowship with God. 


Perhaps even more than the unity of God, the 
Christian conception of the character of God comes 
as a revelation to men accustomed to think of God as 
a metaphysical abstraction, or as a distant, unknown 
or malignant power. For Christians who have known 
since childhood the prayer-life and the faith of Jesus, 
it is difficult to conceive what it must mean, even for 
Mohammedans, to learn to think of God as one who 
loves them and whom they can love and trust, one who 
would have them come to Him, with whom they can 
have fellowship, who can hear and answer prayer. 


One significant way in which the Christian concep- 


tion of the Father God makes itself felt, in contrast 


THE POWER OF CHRISTIANITY _ 109 


with non-Christian ideas of God, is that, wherever 
Christianity understands itself, the worship of God is 
conducted in the mother tongue of the worshipper. 
There is nothing accidental about the language in 
which the story of Jesus is told in the Gospels. Based 
as it is on the model of the historical books of the 
Hebrew Old Testament, it combines the majesty of 
the divine things of which it speaks with the simplicity 
of the little child. The men who, in the fourteenth 
century and later, were willing to give their lives that 
the people of England might have the Bible in their 
mother tongue, had penetrated one of the secrets of 
the power of the Christian religion. It is calculated 
that the language in which the Mohammedan Scrip- 
tures are read as scripture, and the entire canonical 
devotional exercises are conducted, is intelligible to 
only one in a thousand of Indian Mohammedans. To 
the vast majority of Hindus, also, the language in 
which prayers are offered and the ritual is conducted is 
an unknown tongue. The Christian insistence that God 
speaks to man with an intelligible voice, and that man 
must speak to God with an intelligent voice, is just 
another aspect of the fact that Christianity is not a 
philosophy but a life, a religion not for the scholar but 
for the common man and woman. 


3. Its Presentation of Jesus Christ as the Supreme 
Revelation of God. 

That Jesus Christ is the supreme revelation of God is 
another truth that satisfies a fundamental need of the 
human mind. Most men are so made that they must 
find God manifest in the flesh or make for themselves 
a manifest God out of wood or stone. That God is 
Spirit and that God is One, are incomplete truths with- 
out the other, that the Word became flesh and taber- 


110 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


nacled among us and we beheld his glory. Dayanand 
Saraswati, the founder of the Arya Samaj, has stated 
that the first thing which disgusted him, as a boy of 
fourteen, with popular Hinduism, was his experience 
in Siva’s temple on the sacred night of Sivaratri. It 
seemed to him incredible that the hideous emblem of 
Siva bestriding his bull could really be the Mahadeva, 
the Great Deity, the divine hero of the stories told in 
his sacred books. He was particularly struck by the 
fact that his father and the temple servants fell asleep, 
though professedly believing that sleep on this sacred 
night robbed the worshipper of the good effect of his 
devotion, and the “god” showed no resentment when 
rats polluted his body by running over it.! 


4. The Christian Attitude Toward Idolatry. 


One would rank high among the achievements of 
missions the work they have done in protesting, in 
simply protesting, even if sometimes ineffectively, 
against idolatry. The rationale of the effects of idol- 
worship is perhaps imperfectly understood, but about 
the fact there can surely be no doubt. It is still as true 
to-day as it was when Paul wrote the first chapter of 
Romans that idol-worship is as degrading mentally 
and morally as it is spiritually. Keshab Chandra Sen, 
third leader of the Brahma Samaj, said to his Indian 
fellow countrymen: “‘There can be no doubt that the 
root of all evils which affect Hindu society, that which 
constitutes the chief cause of its degradation, is idola- 
try. Idolatry is the curse of Hindustan, the deadly 
canker that has eaten into the vitals of native society.”’ ” 
This was written in the days when pious Hindus looked 


1See quotation from his autobiography in Farquhar’s Modern Religious Move- 
ments in India, pp. 102 ff. 
? Dennis, Christian Missions and Social Progress, I, p. 310. 


THE POWER OF CHRISTIANITY 111 


at their religious customs with unprejudiced eyes in 
the new, clear light that Christianity gave, long before 
Mrs. Besant came with her sophistries to teach them 
that the idol was not just a piece of stone, but was 
magnetized by divine ceremonies into an object fit to 
be used in worship. 

People who have a spiritual religion and who take it 
seriously have for idols an almost physical aversion and 
contempt. We know the mixture of fear and loathing 
that the spiritually minded Jews had for the idolatrous 
pagan worship with which they were so often sur- 
rounded, and how that feeling was explained by the 
ease with which the purer worship degenerated by in- 
fection into the grosser. Even an illiterate Mohamme- 
dan considers that the idolatry of the Hindu puts him 
on an immensely inferior level. Any one who has lived 
near a Hindu temple, heard the songs of the wor- 
shippers, sung to the accompaniment of the blowing 
of horns, the beating of drums, and the clashing of 
cymbals, grow louder and louder, more and more fren- 
zied, as the night grew into the morning, until it almost 
seemed as if the devotees were drunk with religious 
enthusiasm, can understand how Paul seemed willing 
to grant that in the idol there really was a demonic 
rival to God. 


5. The Arguments in Excuse of Idolatry. 


We may freely allow the possibility that the use of 
idols is a stage, perhaps even a necessary stage, in the 
development from animism to a spiritual worship; that 
by the use of idols, multitudes have come into closer, 
perhaps even more uplifting, contact with the Power 
behind the universe than they could have reached with- 
out it. We gladly acknowledge the extent to which 
human life has been enriched in the departments of 


112 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


literature, painting, sculpture, and architecture by the 
desire for a concrete representation of the divine Being. 
So far as present day issues are concerned, all that is 
irrelevant. 

It is hardly necessary to discuss the contention that 
the idolater does not worship the idol, but uses it only 
as a help to concentration in his meditation on God. So 
far as the illiterate are concerned, we may say that they 
do not worship the idol, if we use the phrase in some 
recondite sense which deprives it of all meaning. As for 
the educated, when they take part in idolatrous cere- 
monies, they do so in many cases for prudential reasons 
under a conscious compromise with conscience. Yet 
this is by no means always the case. No one who has 
ever seen a band of Hindu students taking part in the 
annual Ganpati celebrations at a time of religious and 
political excitement, can doubt for a moment that, 
for the time at least, they use the image because they 
believe it brings them into contact with a real spirit. 
Sometimes, as with the Aryan invaders of India, 
idolatry was from the first a declension from a higher 
state of spiritual evolution. In the far East as well as 
in Palestine, idolatrous worship has shown an extra- 
ordinary power to seduce the followers of purer faiths 
with which it comes into contact. 

Whatever truth there may be in apologies for the 
idolater of the past, there can be none for the man who, 
with a more spiritual conception of God full in view, 
deliberately chooses to continue his worship of the 
idol. We have spoken as if there were some one form 
of worship that could be labelled idolatry. In reality 
idols vary in their form, their art, and their suggestive- 
ness as widely as the child’s first scrawls and the plays 
of Shakespeare. Men of the West who speak with tol- 
erance or even approval of idolatry are usually either 


THE POWER OF CHRISTIANITY 113 


devoid of monotheistic passion or are ignorant of the 
ugly or even revolting objects which to millions on 
millions represent God. Whatever part the image may 
have played in ancient Greece, idol-worship as we see 
it to-day, in so many cases a conscious second best, 
seems to be as disabling mentally as it is degrading 
morally and spiritually. The persistent protest by 
Christian missionaries against the whole practice, a 
protest in which they are joined by Mohammedans, 
has in many lands prepared the way for a rise of the 
whole nation to a higher level of life. 

In all our discussion of idol-worship, it is well to keep 
before our minds an actual picture of a typical idol of 
to-day. Let us take this description of Kali, the god- 
dess who gives her name to a suburb from which Cal- 
cutta gets its name. It should be noted that Kali is 
the most popular deity among the teeming millions 
of Bengal, and that the Bengali has been described, 
with some justice, as the cleverest man on earth. 
“The image is a terrifying one—a black visage and 
ungainly form, a necklace of skulls, earrings of two 
dead bodies, a girdle of dead men’s hands, four arms, 
one holding a knife dripping with blood, and another 
a severed head. The goddess is dancing a frenzied 
dance on the bodies of her victims, her eyes glaring in 
triumph, and her tongue protruding. She must be 
worshipped with sacrifices of blood.” } 


6. Christianity Delivers from Fear. 

Again, the Western mind cannot realize from any 
corresponding experience how completely life, over a 
large part of the non-Christian world, is dominated 
by fear; fear of many kinds, but chiefly fear of the un- 
known and of spiritual powers of evil that are all- 

1 United Free Church of Scotland publications: Our Mission in Bengal, p. 14. 


114 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


pervasive and ever lie in wait to hurt. The belief in 
evil demons that so terrorized the Galileans of our 
Lord’s day, far from being a solitary phenomenon, has 
been and still is one of the commonest features of human 
life, and in our day oppresses the minds of multitudes 
in many parts of the world. 

Warneck describes the Battak animist as “like a man 
driven in a frenzied pursuit round and round. Ghosts 
of the most diverse kind lurk in house and village; 
in the field they endanger the produce of labor; in the 
forest they terrify the woodcutter; in the bush they 
hunt the wanderer. From them come diseases, madness, 
death of cattle, and famine. Malicious demons sur- 
round women during pregnancy and at confinement; 
they lie in wait for the child from the day of its birth; 
they swarm round the houses at night; they spy 
through the chinks of the walls for the helpless victims. 
Gigantic spirits stride through the villages scattering 
epidemics around them; they lurk in the sea and rivers 
with the view of dragging travellers into the depths. 
They are not laughing fauns or mocking satyrs, but 
merciless messengers of death.” 4 

That the illiterate have no monopoly of these dis- 
abling terrors is shown, to take a solitary instance, by 
Paul’s hymn of hope at the end of the eighth chapter of 
Romans. He includes demonic principalities and pow- 
ers among the agencies that have no power to harm the 
Christian, implying that in his belief these beings are 
shorn of their hurtful power only by the love of God 
revealed in Jesus Christ. 

In the same passage, in his categories of the enemies 
of the Christian, Paul includes the “‘height” and the 
“depth,” presumably the height into which the stars 
seem to rise as they come above the horizon and the 

1 The Living Forces of the Gospel, p. 109. 


THE POWER OF CHRISTIANITY 115 


depth into which they seem to sink as they set. The 
words remind us of that form of fatalism, all but uni- 
versal in history, which consists in belief in the in- 
fluence, especially the malign influence, of the stars in 
human life. To this day the horoscope is an active 
institution even among the educated classes of India. 
It is true that delivery from this brooding terror may 
come from modern science as well as from the Christian 
faith; but the Christian faith wrought deliverance long 
before the days of modern science, and none can tell 
how much the spirit and the methods of modern science 
owe to the freedom that comes with Christianity. 


7. Its Exaltation of the Worth of the Individual. 


To slaves, to the low-castes and outcastes of India, 
and to all races and classes that have been denied the 
rights of personality, the Gospel of Christ comes as an 
evangel, with its message of the infinite worth of the 
individual. One has seen this Christian truth called 
an axiom. Perhaps the great majority of those who 
have been brought into contact with human life in its 
most degraded forms would confess that, far from re- 
garding it as an axiom, they can believe in it at all 
only by an active exercise of faith and a resolute de- 
termination to try to see men in the light that Jesus 
gives. Yet experience in a hundred mission fields, of 
the possibilities of life at its most hopeless levels when 
touched by the vivifying power of the Christ, has 
abundantly justified the optimism of Jesus. 

Other peoples have fallen as low in the scale of morals 
and of civilization as the outcastes of India; but surely 
no other people has reached the same depth of degrada- 
tion in comparison with, and in the estimation of, their 
own neighbors and fellow citizens. Until lately, the 


116 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


idea that they were fellow citizens would have been 
‘scouted by the great mass of those who lived in the 
same town or village; in large measure it would be 
still. In The Outcastes’ Hope Mr. Godfrey E. Phillips 
rightly chooses, as one of the supreme tests of the worth 
of a religion, the attitude of its devotees in the face of 
an epidemic of cholera; striking as it does so suddenly, 
attended as it is by a mortality so great. His verdict 
is that “nothing is more certain than this—that in 
cholera time the outcaste Christians stand steady when 
their neighbors, by their very panic, are creating condi- 
tions favorable to the spread of the disease; that they 
meet the disease, when it does come to them, with the 
courage born of Christian faith, and that some of them, 
especially those who have become teachers, often show 
magnificent courage and self-sacrifice in ministering 
to the sufferers both heathen and Christian.”’ He tells 
how on one occasion a pariah Christian who had become 
a catechist came into Secunderabad for cholera medi- 
cine. Just after he had reached the station, his own 
son in the Boys’ Home was attacked by the disease; 
yet, to the surprise and disappointment of the mis- 
sionary, the catechist hurried off at once. It was only 
later that the missionary learned, what the catechist 
was surprised he did not guess from the first, that the 
man was leaving his son with absolute confidence in 
the hands of the missionary, while he went off to be 
ready to help the people for whom he was himself 
responsible. 

If to the sweepers of India and to the backward tribes 
of Africa, Christianity to-day sometimes appeals pri- 
marily as affording the opportunity of a rise in the 
social scale, it would be foolish to underestimate the 
value, even the religious value, of such a motive. 
Whatever increases self-respect or healthy social recog- 


THE POWER OF CHRISTIANITY 117 


nition paves the way for the development of Christian 
character. 


8. Its Noble Ethical Demands. 


If the high moral demands of Christianity form, in 
the case of many, an obstacle to the acceptance of the 
Gospel, it is to the credit of human nature that in these 
same moral demands lies for many the drawing power of 
the Christian faith. Man is made in God’s image in 
this sense, that the uncompromising ethical claims of 
Jesus wake an answering echo in minds which, till 
they heard them, hardly knew what it was they craved. 
One of the anomalies of religious life to-day is that, 
while Christians are puzzled by the Sermon on the 
Mount and have in many cases the greatest difficulty 
in relating it to their lives, outside of Christendom 
there is hardly any part of the New Testament that 
makes a stronger appeal. One has heard of an Indian 
being led to become a Christian through finding on the 
ground beside a railway track a torn leaf containing 
some verses from the fifth chapter of Matthew. 

Even those who thought they knew something of 
the power of the Gospel have been surprised to find 
how infectious is the spirit of Christian service. The 
Servants of India Society, founded by the late Mr. 
Gopal Krishna Gokhale, is largely modelled on the 
Christian missionary societies, and, at least in the 
intention of its founder, even more stringent renuncia- 
tion is demanded of its members than in the case of 
most missionaries. The ideals of this society and of 
others similar in India are all the more striking, when 
we remember that, according to the theory of Hinduism, 
all help given to the distressed is a needless and useless 
interference with the law of karma, or retribution. One 
has seen Hindu students, busy men working for their 


118 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


university degree, gathering low-caste boys and men of 
the neighborhood into a night school, and night after 
night patiently teaching them to read and write and 
work sums. Not so long before, the very presence of the 
outcastes in the same room would have defiled these 
Brahmins and Marathas. As one saw the students 
patiently bending over the slates and books of these 
same pariahs, and asked oneself what had made the 
difference, one knew of no answer, save that, almost 
unconsciously to themselves, perhaps in a measure 
against their wills, their hearts had been captivated 
by the spirit of Him who came not to be ministered 
unto, but to minister. 


9g. Its Exhibit of the Christian Home. 


If the demands of the Christian Gospel for purity, 
uprightness, and service appeal to the finer types of 
non-Christian men, still more do they appeal to wo- 
men. The demand, made by Jesus and continued by 
Paul, for absolute sexual purity has been accepted by 
the church wherever she has understood her mission, 
and has made a deep impression on the non-Christian 
world. It does not seem too much to say that the 
women of any other religion are opposed to Christianity 
only in so far as they do not understand it. On the 
other hand, Christianity can flourish only where the 
women as well as the men understand and accept its 
teaching. The Christian home is at once the nursery, 
the stronghold, and the object lesson of the faith. It 
may be true, as has been said, that there are women in 
Africa who resent monogamy, since 1t means. that the 
field work, commonly shared by several wives, has to 
be done by one. But surely the estimate is truer, that 
all women in their hearts hate polygamy, and welcome 
Christian standards of marriage and sex relations. 


THE POWER OF CHRISTIANITY 119 


The spectacle of unmarried lady missionaries living 
lives of untrammelled freedom without a breath of sus- 
picion being raised against them is, even to the edu- 
cated non-Christian mind, one of the marvels of 
Christian achievement; just as in another way is the 
sight of those same women giving up attractive 
careers in their own country, enduring much physical 
discomfort, and often facing hardship and danger, all 
that they may spend themselves in the service of aliens. 

In The International Review of Missions for April, 
1914, Miss Kheroth M. Bose had a fine, suggestive 
article on “The Idea of Womanhood as a Factor in 
Missionary Work.” ‘The very possibility of such an 
article from the pen of an Indian lady is an excellent 
commentary on the Indian tradition to which Miss 
Bose refers, that, as a reward for his piety, it was 
promised to the Buddha that he should never, in any 
reincarnation, be born in hell, or as any kind of vermin, 
or aS a woman. She quotes a leading Sikh who said 
to her that Christianity is the only religion for women. 
An Indian‘ gentleman, whose wife had just died of 
plague, was telling a colleague of the writer of this book 
how much he had loved her. “I did not treat her as a 
wife,’ he said; “I treated her as an equal; I even al- 
lowed her to sit at the same table as myself.” By this 
special mark of favor to his wife, this gentleman was 
breaking through what has been, alike in theory and 
practice, for the last two and a half millennia and 
right down to our own day, the traditional relation of 
Hindu husbands and wives. 


10. Its Message of Hope for Those Who Have Failed. 

While all this is true, it is only part of a truth. A 
religion that had no message save for men and women 
of high ideals could never have had the history that 


120 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


Christianity has had. Where the Christian faith is 
true to itself, it must always deserve the taunt that 
Celsus, the most formidable of its early opponents, 
hurled against it in the second century. In other re- 
ligions, he said, the invitation to draw near is for men of 
clean hands, upright life, and sensible speech; but the 
Christian call is to thieves, poisoners, and robbers of 
corpses, to the foolish and the simple-minded. There 
are men in India to-day, some even who call themselves 
Christians, who resent the swamping of the churches 
with the ignorant and the outcaste, but the apostle Paul 
saw more truly to the heart of the Christian message. 


11. Its Call to Repentance. 


In the apostolic days the summons to a repentance 
that issued in life, and the promise of the forgiveness 
of sins, played a large part in the Christian programme. 
The sense of sin, in the Christian interpretation of the 
phrase, can hardly be said to press heavily on the non- 
Christian mind of our day, any more than on the 
Christian mind. In its full development it is perhaps 
the result, rather than the occasion, of submission to 
Christian influence. In the world religions, especially 
in Hinduism, a transgression of the ritual requirements 
seems to many more heinous, and more urgently de- 
mands expiation, than an offence against moral law. 
Yet there are always some sensitive souls who can join 
from the heart in the fifty-first psalm; and, even 
where the sense of sin’ is less poignant, there is a more 
or less conscious feeling of estrangement from God. 
The motto of the Epistle to the Hebrews, “‘Let us 
draw near to God through Jesus Christ,” still points 
to one of the main sources of the power of the Christian 
faith; most of all when it comes as a welcome relief 
to the weary pilgrimages, the fatiguing and meaning- 


THE POWER OF CHRISTIANITY 121 


less ceremonial, the stern ascetic discipline and self- 
torture, the sacrifices and works of merit, with which 
the votaries of other faiths seek for religious peace. 


12. Its Conception of Life Eternal. 


Essential to the power of Christianity is the sanity 
and the spirituality of its conception of death and what 
comes after death. Life is one of the key-words of the 
Christian faith; so often the ideals of other faiths sug- 
gest death rather than life. In life as the Christian 
knows it death is but an incident in the history of the 
person, suppression is never an end in itself, and the 
goal is not absorption in the “all.” Life is vitality, 
progressive and expansive, whose destiny, unless we 
thwart it, is an ever larger fulfilment of aspirations 
that are worth fulfilling. 

In the fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians, Paul pro- 
tests against the conception of a bodiless immortality. 
For him the abiding life of the Christian is a life that 
can express itself, a life that can influence and be in- 
fluenced, that can know and be known. This is only 
one aspect of the lofty teaching which Christianity 
inherits from its founder about the body, a teaching 
whose divine inspiration is all the more evident when it 
is placed over against the insulting treatment of the 
physical nature so often demanded by the conception 
of holiness in the world faiths. It has indeed been 
claimed, perhaps with some exaggeration, that Chris- 
tianity was the first religion that took up a sane atti- 
tude to the body. 


13. Its Contribution to National Regeneration. 
Many, again, are looking to the religion of Jesus as 

their only hope for that social and national regeneration 

for which they believe their country is crying out. 


122 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


The aspiration after social and political progress that 
has moved India so profoundly, progress to be secured 
by the work of Indians, can be traced directly or in- 
directly to Christian influence and runs directly counter 
to the teaching of Hindu philosophy. The Japanese 
statesman, Count Okuma, himself not a Christian, has 
put on record his recognition of the fact that the re- 
juvenation of Japan, China, and India dates from the 
time when they ceased to find their inspiration in 
Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism and came 
under the influence of Christianity; not only directly 
through the missionaries, but indirectly through the 
medium of Christian ideals as embodied in English 
culture and expressed in the English language and in 
English literature. 


XII 
THE PROPER TESTS OF MISSIONARY 
PROGRESS 


The preceding pages have been largely occupied with 
some account of the way in which, and the methods by 
which, the Gospel of Jesus has won its way to the hearts 
of such multitudes and has increasingly become a 
formative influence in the social relations of men. Con- 
siderations of space forbid much further discussion of 
this aspect of the subject; but it is necessary to say 
something, partly by way of warning, about the way 
in which progress is to be measured. 


1. The Fallacy of Numerical Tests. 


A study of the expansion of the church, as recorded 
in the pages of the New Testament, should make us 
very sceptical of the value of the tests we commonly 
apply; should remind us, indeed, of the very limited 
extent to which spiritual movements are amenable to 
the criteria of the mathematician or the surveyor. 

Within the New Testament period, as we have seen, 
Christianity was spreading with extraordinary rapidity; 
whether we have regard to the geographical area 
affected, the variety of peoples and faiths that embraced 
the new religion, or the profundity of the revolution 
that was taking place where Christian thought and 
feeling held sway. Yet, to any eye except that of 
Christian faith, down to the end of the apostolic age, 
the whole number of Christians would have made a 
very unimposing show in any statistical report, if 

123 


124 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


any one had ever thought of preparing one. The first 
followers of Jesus do not seem to have been much given, 
any more than their Master, to the counting of heads. 
If regard were had, not only to the number of the con- 
verts, but to their social standing or want of standing, 
and to their educational qualifications, then to the 
broad-minded, level-headed man of the time, the Chris- 
tian ambition of the world for Christ must have 
seemed about as ludicrous as any world ambition could 
well be., 

Could they have looked into the future, in some 
respects at least, the outlook was calculated to damp 
the ardor of the Christians even more than a dispas- 
sionate study of the present. In our day Palestine and 
Northern Africa have to be recaptured for the faith, 
almost de novo. There is not one of the churches 
founded by Paul that we regard to-day as an important 
centre of Christian influence. Paul’s imagination was 
captivated by the thought of winning for Christ the 
imperial city. It was not given to him to found the 
Church of Rome, but he gave witness there and wrote 
to the church of the capital his most elaborate and 
reasoned epistle. For centuries past, the influence of 
the Church of Rome has seemed to multitudes of Chris- 
tians hardly less inimical to the faith than that of some 
of the non-Christian religions. 

In spite of all this, Christianity is to-day the strong- 
est moral force and the most uplifting spiritual influence 
in the world. The wind bloweth where it listeth. 
Facts like these make us chary alike of assessing the 
present and of prophesying the future. 

Except in the hands of the most careful and conscien- 
tious experts, a mere handful in any country at any 
given time, statistics are notoriously misleading as 
applied in any social science. Used as a test of spiritual 


TESTS OF MISSIONARY PROGRESS 125 


progress amid unfamiliar surroundings, if they are to 
have any meaning at all, they must be used with spe- 
cial precautions. To begin with, statistics of the growth 
of a religion usually fail to distinguish between “‘con- 
versions” and “natural increase”’ of population. They 
assume that each man counts for one and no man for 
more than one, that the drunken, degenerate “ Chris- 
tian”’ who hardly ever enters the church door is on a par 
with the Brahmin convert who, for his religious convic- 
tions, gave up fortune, family, and prospects. 


2. Pitfalls of Conversion Figures. 


Where figures of “conversions”’ are given, they usu- 
ally fail to distinguish between the various social and 
religious strata from which the converts come. In 
India the change from the outcaste condition to Chris- 
tianity is comparatively easy, and among the “un- 
touchables”’ conversions take place by the thousand. 
Among Hindus of high caste, the difficulties of joining 
the Christian church are regarded by most as insur- 
mountable, and in these classes converts are still 
reckoned by units. Figures, again, can take little 
account of those who are “almost persuaded”’ and who, 
without taking the decisive step are yet, within wide 
limits, living the Christian life. In the nature of the 
case, too, they leave out of account the whole of that 
influence of the Christian leaven in multitudes of lives 
and in many hearts which can never be tabulated. 

On this subject it is sufficient to say that in every 
important country in the world there is a Christian 
church of great and growing influence, developing 
extensively in numbers and in geographical area; 
intensively in character, in independence of thought, 
and in the power and variety of self-expression. 


126 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


3. The Christian Type of Face. 


Once a missionary, being asked to give in the brief- 
est compass some proof of the power of the Gospel 
among non-Christian peoples, replied that Christianity 
stamps itself on the face. The light of the body is the 
eye. An Indian Christian student writes thus, for 
The Student World, about the little village school of 
his boyhood, in which the Christian pupils were a 
tiny handful among the Hindus and Mohammedans. 
“Because [the Christians] are so few, and because in 
the life of boys religious differences do not stand in the 
way of physical and social mingling, one would not ex- 
pect to discern any distinction between the Christian 
and the non-Christian. But government inspectors 
and other visitors are invariably right when they 
point to certain boys and ask them if they are not Chris- 
tians. It is the more astonishing since there is a com- 
plete absence of such hints as caste-marks. When I 
visited the village school about two years ago, the 
teacher asked me how I was able to recognize the Chris- 
tian boys, and I replied that there was an almost 
unmistakable gleam of bright hope reflected through 
the eyes.”’ The same impression was made on Doctor 
Schweitzer on his first introduction to African Chris- 
tians at Baraka, near Libreville, when on his way to 
his own station in Central Africa. He was greatly 
struck with the contrast between the clean, decently 
clothed Christians and the blacks of the seaports. 
“Even the faces are not the same. These had a free 
and yet modest look in them that cleared from my 
mind the haunting vision of sullen and unwilling sub- 
jection, mixed with insolence, which had _ hitherto 
looked at me out of the eyes of so many negroes.”’ 


TESTS OF MISSIONARY PROGRESS 127 


4. Non-Missionary Christian Achievements. 


In trying to judge the extent to which the introduc- 
tion of Christianity has transformed the ideals of a non- 
Christian people, we have to remind ourselves that 
Christian influence is not wielded exclusively by pro- 
fessional missionaries. It is exercised also through 
Christian public influence and makes itself felt through 
the medium of English literature, and through the code 
of honor of Christian administrators and business men. 
Thus the abolition of public indecency in Hindu re- 
ligious processions and of such cruel customs as suttee 
(which ordained that a Hindu widow must commit 
suicide, voluntarily or involuntarily, on her husband’s 
funeral pyre) was largely the work of British govern- 
ment officials working in harmony with enlightened 
Indian opinion; while Indian industrial legislation for 
the protection of women and minors is ultimately 
inspired by public opinion in Britain. The introduction 
of the compulsory Sunday rest in Indian industries 
was greatly simplified by the extent to which the 
pioneers of the manufacturing industry in Eastern 
India had come from Scotland. 


5. The Healing Ministry of Christianity. 

The story of the healing ministry of the Gospel in 
our own day needs no elaboration; but only those who 
know at first hand something of the nameless and in- 
calculable pain caused by the ravages of disease in 
tropical and semi-tropical countries, and of the need- 
less aggravations of this pain due to the remedies 
prescribed by ignorant superstition, can in any degree 
know what it means to have a gospel that sends men 
and women forth on errands of healing. 

Doctor Albert Schweitzer (we make no apology for 


128 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


referring to him once more) gives a graphic account of 
the awful diseases of Central Africa, and of what the 
doctor, with Western science at his disposal, can do 
to help. He mentions in particular the recent discovery 
that arseno-benzol, injected into the veins of the arm, 
cures as if by magic the sores of the so-called “rasp- 
berry disease,”’ from which almost all the negroes of 
the district suffer at some time or other; and the other 
new practice of employing emetin for the tropical 
dysentery of Africa, the use of which is followed at 
once by a great Improvement and usually by a perma- 
nent cure. It would be worth while, he says, for a doctor 
to go to Central Africa, though he had no means of 
healing but those. He hints too—he can do no more 
than hint—at the suffering caused in the tropics by 
the diseases brought by Europeans to those “children 
of nature.” 

It is not always realized to what an extent some of 
the diseases that are the scourges of the East, like 
bubonic plague, cholera, malarial fever, and leprosy, 
are preventable. Yet, in dealing with backward peo- 
ples, the work of preventing them requires something 
more than the issue of government orders and the pro- 
vision of up-to-date equipment. These may completely 
fail unless, by explanations given in the spirit of Chris- 
tian consideration, we can win the confidence of the 
people. This work is being done by missionaries, and 
by many who are not missionaries but who draw their 
inspiration from the same source. 


6. Its Work of Education a Bulwark Against Agnosti- 
cism and Atheism. 
We should realize better what Christian missions 


have done, could we for a moment get a glimpse of the 
world as it would have been had the work of these 


TESTS OF MISSIONARY PROGRESS 129 


missions never been undertaken. Modern knowledge 
and modern ways of looking at the world have every- 
where influenced multitudes in the great centres of the 
world and in many countries have penetrated far from 
the highways. The new outlook is often quite incom- 
patible with the old religions, which, however unsatis- 
factory as religions, were yet the only basis of morality 
the people knew. It is a perilous business to undermine 
the foundations of the moral life of a nation; yet that is 
what has been happening in many of the great coun- 
tries of the world. 

Some of the problems of the Orient would be better 
understood than they are, were the extent realized to 
which Western education has been producing vast 
numbers of educated men who are in fact agnostics; 
consciously and professedly so, as in the case of many 
Japanese; less frankly and perhaps less consciously so, 
as in the case of many Hindus. When the leaders of a 
nation have no positive religious beliefs on which to 
build a morally effective life, the nation is in peril. 
That the situation has not become disastrous is in large 
measure the result of the work of Christian schools 
and colleges, scattered throughout the non-Christian 
world; whose teachers have never ceased to proclaim 
that, whatever modern science may seem to say, God 
is, God is one, and God is good. Very many who have 
never yielded any kind of allegiance to the Christian 
faith must have been impressed, in a sense even 
“saved,” by the sight of men and women, educated 
like themselves in the science and philosophy of the 
day, yet refusing to believe that the world of the bodily 
life is the real world, living in the spirit and power of 
the eternal, so convinced that Jesus Christ is the 
truth of things that for his sake they turn a deaf ear 
to all lesser claims. | 


130 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


7. The Gradual Christianization of the Non-Christian 
Religions. 

The fact that in countries where idolatry is practised, 
many now so often deny that the idol is worshipped, 
is only one example of a common tendency that points 
to the profound impression Christian teaching has made 
wherever it is heard. It is more or less tacitly accepted 
everywhere as the ideal, alike in thought and in prac- 
tice. Hindu apologetic to-day largely takes the form 
of showing that there is no essential difference between 
Christianity and Hinduism. That is perhaps not quite 
so true to-day as it was twenty years ago. Since then 
Mrs. Besant has shown the Hindus how to rationalize 
and spiritualize beliefs which they themselves were giv- 
ing up as unworthy of educated men; on the other 
hand, the movement for political independence has 
been closely associated with a renaissance of all things 
Indian, including Indian religions. These are probably 
temporary phenomena. It remains true that Hindus, 
while having difficulty about Christian metaphysic, 
have for all practical purposes, with a unanimity which 
is a testimony to their open-mindedness and spiritual 
responsiveness, acknowledged the compelling power of 
Jesus and the worth of Christian ethic. 

If it is not quite true to say that the same statement 
holds good of all other religions, namely that their 
apologetes are eager to show how closely they approxi- 
mate to Christianity, we may perhaps say with some 
confidence that Christianity is the one religion against 
which they seriously measure themselves and that their 
attitude to Christianity is now that of defence. Vari- 
ous non-Christian religions are paying Christianity 
the high compliment of the imitation of her beliefs, her 
ethics, and her methods. While Buddhism and espe- 


TESTS OF MISSIONARY PROGRESS 131 


cially Hinduism are perhaps the religions that have 
most closely adopted Christian methods such as zenana 
work, orphanages, young men’s religious associations, 
and the distribution of literature, some of the most 
interesting developments on the lines of Christian 
thought have taken place in Mohammedanism. 

Professor Stewart Crawford of the Syrian Protestant 
College at Beirut once wrote! “[Another] feature of 
present-day Islam that indicates the presence of a vital 
religious energy is the progressive idealization of the 
Prophet’s personality by his followers. The clearest 
evidence of this is seen in the maulid form of service. 
The maulid is strictly the anniversary of the Prophet’s 
birthday, and is everywhere an occasion for joyful 
celebration. The term has also come to be employed as 
a name for a certain form of service. ... At these 
services the hymns chanted by paid leaders and choirs 
are the principal feature. ... The subject of these 
hymns is invariably the birth of the Prophet with a 
recitation of the significance for heaven and earth of 
that sublime event. ... [The maulid poets] have even 
advanced to a mystical philosophy of the Prophet’s 
cosmic significance, in which his pre-existence is prac- 
tically assumed, and the supreme influence of his 
intercessory function is set forth with all the florid 
wealth of Oriental imagery. ... Toward the close of 
the ceremony . . . [the Prophet] is saluted with en- 
thusiastic expressions of personal loyalty and devo- 
tion. . . . The philosophical conceptions from which a 
practical deification has resulted have undoubtedly 
had their origin in the intellectual activity of educated 
converts from Christianity.” 


1 International Review of Missions, October, 1912. 


132 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


8. Christianity Truly a World Religion. 


In all this we do not for a moment forget the con- 
tribution made by other religions to the civilizing and 
uplifting of mankind, the humanitarian ideals of Bud- 
dhism, for example, or the fight waged by Moham- 
medanism in the Soudan against alcohol, cannibalism, 
and blood revenge. When due allowance is made for 
all this, we have reached the stage when, of the religions 
known to us, it is hardly conceivable that any but 
Christianity could ever become a religion for mankind. 
Perhaps the educated Hindu would be hardly less 
aghast than the rest of mankind if the suggestion were 
ever seriously made that the world become Hindu; 
certainly, this seems to have no place among Hindu 
ideals to-day. Buddhism, as a kindly ethic and as a 
philosophy, has shown wonderful vitality in some parts 
of Asia; of its capacity to become a world religion, we 
have yet to see the first sign. Mohammedanism and 
the religions of China and Japan, when indeed they are 
religions at all, seem to have an influence that is essen- 
tially limited to certain regions of the earth’s surface. 

It is true that in some spheres of effort, especially 
among Mohammedans (with the notable exception of 
those of the Dutch East Indies), and among the Brah- 
mins of India, at least in the last generation, after the 
comparatively short time during which missionary 
work has been conducted, Christianity has few results 
to show of the kind of which statisticians can take note. 
Yet practically everywhere else, the Christian Gospel, 
preached and lived among peoples of all creeds, classes, 
colors, kinds of character, and states of civilization, 
has made an impression so profound, and won triumphs 
so notable, that it has more than made good its claim 
to be a religion such as may one day bind all men in a 
common brotherhood. . 


XI 


THE INDEBTEDNESS OF WESTERN CHRIS- 
TIANITY TO MISSIONS 


We have been accustomed to think of the relation 
of the Western churches to the mission churches as that 
of giver to receiver. In so far as the description is cor- 
rect, there is all the more reason why we must strenu- 
ously protest against every attempt to base the mis- 
sionary cause on interested motives. Let there be one 
piece of unselfish work which the West does for the 
rest of the world. But it would not be in accordance 
with the nature of things that the giving should be all 
on one side. The feeling that we go to other nations to 
learn as well as to teach, whether it is as recent a 
development as we sometimes think or not, is at least 
more conscious and more vocal than formerly. 


1. World Evangelism the Discharge of a Debt. 


Stewart of Lovedale waxed eloquent against those 
who used the word “sacrifice” in speaking of the things 
that missionaries give up and the hardships they often 
endure. Some of those who have entered most deeply 
into the Christian spirit would go further and deny that 
the bearer of the “good news”’ goes to the non-Christian 
world in the character of a voluntary giver. Paul re- 
garded his mission as the simple discharge of an obliga- 
tion: “I am debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, 
both to the wise and to the foolish’? (Romans 1: 14). 
In modern times, M. Berthoud chose an African field 
for his missionary labors, because of his sense of the 
obligation resting upon Christians to atone to Africa 

133 


134 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


for the wrongs of slavery. The utmost we can do for 
that dark and sorrowing land is but a poor compensa- 
tion for the cruelties we have inflicted on her. Of these 
cruelties, slavery is perhaps the chief, and it has the 
unhappy distinction of having been practised for a 
time under the benediction of the church. Doctor 
Robinson tells us that “‘a large number of the slaves 
shipped abroad from West Africa were taken from the 
Congo districts, and a marble chair formerly existed 
on the pier at St. Paul de Loanda from which the 
bishops used to give their blessing to the slave ships 
which were preparing to sail for the Portuguese pos- 
sessions in Brazil or the West Indies.”’ ! 

Doctor Schweitzer, too, in the impassioned words of 
one who has known at first hand the sufferings and the 
wrongs of Africa, and has looked on them with eyes 
that had caught the pity of Jesus, has thus expressed 
his conviction: “If a record could be compiled of all 
that has happened between the white and the colored 
races, it would make a book containing numbers of 
pages, referring to recent as well as to early times, 
which the reader would have to turn over unread, be- 
cause their contents would be too horrible.” ? Any- 
thing, he says, that we give Africa is not benevolence 
but atonement; and, with all that we can do, we can 
never atone for more than a thousandth part of our 
guilt. 


2. The Salutary Reflex Influence of Missions on 
the Missionary. 


Even, however, if we grant that we engage in the 
work of spreading the Gospel as unconstrained volun- 
teers, it is as true here as elsewhere that it is more 


2 History of Christian Missions, p. 301. 
2 On the Edge of the Primeval Forest, p. 172. 


INDEBTEDNESS OF CHRISTIANITY 135 


blessed to give than to receive. There is a reflex in- 
fluence in all unselfish activities that brings blessing 
to him that gives as well as to him that takes. Lord 
Milner called Stewart of Lovedale “‘the biggest human 
in South Africa.”” Doctor Denney called Doctor Laws 
of Livingstonia “the biggest human he had ever met.” 
Carey, the village cobbler, who left school at twelve 
and knew nothing of college life, and who yet became 
a professor in the government college in Calcutta and 
one of the greatest missionaries of all time, whose 
linguistic achievements, even after the lapse of a cen- 
tury, leave us breathless with astonishment, all the 
more so as they were only one department of the ac- 
tivities of that marvellous pioneer, is only an extreme 
example of a common phenomenon. Among those who 
have any intimate acquaintance with the activities 
of the church in other lands, there must be many who 
regard some missionary as among the finest specimens 
they know of manhood or of womanhood. 

Men like David Livingstone, Robert Morrison, 
Carey of Serampore, Miller of Madras, and Chalmers of 
New Guinea, and women like Mary Slessor of Calabar, 
were no doubt people of uncommon mental and spiritual 
stature to begin with. Yet it would be a mistake to 
think that such people would necessarily have been 
the giants they were had they stayed at home. Where 
one successfully resists the benumbing influence of an 
environment of spiritual deadness and moral degrada- 
tion, such as is the lot of many missionaries, the mis- 
sionary atmosphere makes for growth. Many pioneers 
of Christianity, like most white men working among 
colored races, are bearing a far heavier load of responsi- 
bility than they would among their own people; it is . 
astonishing how often men rise to their responsibilities’ 


As Sir H. H. Johnston said: “When the history of 


136 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


the great African states of the future comes to be 
written, the arrival of the first missionaries will, with 
many of these new nations, be the first historical event 
in their annals.’ The consciousness of taking a part 
of some importance in an epoch-making movement, the 
difficult and delicate problems that one is so often 
called on to solve, the scope that one finds for what- 
ever of talent in almost any direction one may possess, 
all tend to draw out from one the very best of which 
one is capable. As has been said, it is the strain that 
brings the strength. 


3. The Salutary Reflex Influence of Missions on the 
Church. 


Nor is this reflex action of missionary activity con- 
fined to the missionary; it extends to the whole church 
in so far as she takes part in the work. Dealing with 
one of the favorite criticisms of missions, that “charity 
begins at home” and that there are jungles to clear and 
morasses to drain in our own country, the Right Honor- 
able Winston Churchill replied that “nothing is more 
important to this material age than to cultivate and 
develop the element of disinterested labor and work 
on the part of individuals and classes. . . . No great 
benefit will be gained, no lasting treasure will be secured 
by any purely self-centred movement, however grave be 
the need which prompts it, however harsh may be the 
conditions which envelop it.... The democracy 
must not be self-centred.” 


4. Missions as a Field for the Spiritual Energy and 
Capacity of Women. 
Probably few churches realize the extent to which the 
foreign enterprise has provided a field—might we not 
by a different and perhaps more appropriate metaphor 


INDEBTEDNESS OF CHRISTIANITY | 137 


call it a safety-valve ?—for the capacity and the spiri- 
tual energies of their women. One of the grave charges 
we make against Mohammedanism and Hinduism is 
that, by keeping their women-folk in ignorance and 
largely in seclusion, they have in great measure deprived 
whole nations of the fruit of the consecrated talents of 
a whole sex. In Christian countries we do not now keep 
our women either in ignorance or in seclusion; we permit 
and even sometimes encourage them to make their 
contribution to the welfare of the state. Yet the Chris- 
tian church, almost with one accord, has shut out its 
women from the positions of greatest social and 
spiritual influence in the greatest organization for the 
welfare of mankind that the world has ever known, the 
Christian church. The foreign enterprise of the church 
is almost the only department of its activities in which 
women have been allowed freedom—even there within 
strict limitations—to develop the great gifts of mind 
and heart and even body that God has given so many 
of them. The history of Christian missions during the 
last half century has forever given its quietus to any 
lingering suspicion there may have been in the minds of 
the conservative, that the age-long policy of narrowly 
restricting the sphere for the exercise of the talents 
of Christian women had behind it some kind of divine 
sanction. 


5. Missions as Illuminating the Bible. 


The foreign work of the church, especially among 
primitive peoples, has done much to make the Bible 
for us a living book. The atmosphere of the mission 
field is far more akin to the atmosphere of the Bible, 
especially of the Old Testament, than that of the 
West. As the writer has expressed it elsewhere:! “‘India 

1 Expository Times, June, 1921. 


138 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


is not Palestine, yet India and Palestine are both in 
the East. Take the panorama of life as it used to pass 
before one’s door. A raucous, incessant cry for alms 
heralds the approach of a blind beggar. The driver of 
a passing bullock-cart is goading his animals beyond 
their strength as they stumble along beneath their 
yoke, toiling and heavy-laden. A leper approaches, per- 
haps a band of lepers clasping hands, with their loath- 
some sores and their pitiful cries for help. Tempted 
by the wares of an itinerant fruit-seller, you ask him 
their price, and he replies: ‘What Sahib pleases.’ 
On a cot in the near distance lies a ‘holy man,’ clothed 
principally in dust and ashes, superbly indifferent to 
the reverent gaze of the squatting group of admirers. 
A visitor enters with a graceful salaam and an exag- 
gerated expression of joy and humility. The patter of 
feet in the distance and the sound of a mournful chant 
intimate the approach of a funeral procession, following 
the corpse, carried by bearers on an open bier. In the 
heat of the day a passing cartman tethers his beast 
to a tree and lies down to rest under its shade. A wo- 
man on the road takes a fit of some kind, and the by- 
standers explain that she is devil-possessed. In the 
evening a Mussulman, overtaken on the road by the 
close of day, spreads his praying-carpet on the ground 
and performs his devotions with face to the setting 
sun. Might not the picture, in many of its details, 
have walked out of the Bible?” 


6. The Meaning of Names. 


As an illustration of the light that the missionary 
study of primitive peoples sheds on the Bible, take the 
subject of names. Every reader of the Bible is aware 
of the significance attached in it to names, of the im- 
portance of finding the right name, not only for God 


INDEBTEDNESS OF CHRISTIANITY 139 


but for human beings, and of the habit of changing 
the name in accordance with some striking experience 
through which the person has passed. People, too, have 
wondered what precisely is meant by the prohibition 
against taking God’s name “in vain.” 

Perhaps the answer to the last question is found in 
Warneck’s account of the beliefs of the animists of the 
Indian Archipelago. A man’s name, he tells us, is 
closely connected with his soul; his name is therefore 
holy, and should not be uttered unless there is some 
real necessity. It is the work of the magic priests to 
find a name for a person that will be adequate for his 
soul. When a man is sick, that may indicate that his 
soul has left him, and his name is sometimes changed 
in the hope that the soul, attracted by the name, will 
return to the body. Missionaries in other parts of the 
world are familiar with similar ideas. Thus low-caste 
Hindus will give their children such names as “Rat,” 
“Rag,” “Two Cowries” (worth a fraction of a cent) 
in the hope that evil spirits, repelled by such names, 
will leave their children alone. 


7. The Moral Problems of a Christian Community. 


The practical moral problems that arise in the young 
churches of to-day have a striking similarity to those 
that arose in the very beginning of the Christian enter- 
prise. Paul was shocked because the Christians of 
Corinth, when they had disputes with each other, 
followed the Greek practice of taking them to the civil 
(heathen) courts, instead of the Jewish practice of using 
the religious courts to settle even civil disputes. 
Though the Indians are a highly litigious people, in 
twenty years’ experience one never knew a dispute 


1JT Corinthians, 6: 1-8. 


140 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


among Indian Christians being carried to the civil 
courts. 

The question what is the Christian line of action when 
husband or wife becomes Christian and the other 
partner does not, troubled the Corinthian church as 
it vexes many a young church to-day. Paul’s method 
of dealing with the question,! while it may have to be 
supplemented in certain fields to-day, in the broad 
principles he lays down leaves little to be said. It is 
in accordance with his Christian feeling and practical 
good sense that-he ruled out, apparently did not even 
consider, any solution that would ignore a marriage 
celebrated in all good faith under “‘heathen”’ auspices. 
However great our difficulties may be, that is never the 
way out. 

Much of the meat used in Corinth in Paul’s day had 
been previously offered in sacrifice to some god, though 
the offering might be quite formal, only a few hairs of 
the animal being actually destroyed in the sacrifice. 
Apparently also it was common to hold the feasts of 
the trade guilds and private dinner parties in a “hea- 
then” temple, the god being the nominal host. The 
question whether Christians might eat such meat or 
attend such feasts, a question which Paul discussed 
with such Christian sagacity and insight,’ is typical 
of the moral problems that arise wherever Christianity 
for the first times comes into contact with a life satur- 
ated with heathenism. Where idolatry exists, it perme- 
ates the life from waking to sleeping and from the 
cradle to the grave. The emphasis laid in the New 
Testament on hospitality as a Christian virtue is an 
echo of the days when Christians frequently travelled 
on business, and when they would be faced with moral 
temptations and dangers and with difficult questions 

1] Corinthians 7: 12-14. 2T Corinthians 8; 10: 14-33. 


INDEBTEDNESS OF CHRISTIANITY 141 


about food, if they stayed in the public inns and serais. 
Hospitality to travelling Christians is one of the leading 
virtues of Indian Christians, partly because in a caste- 
ridden country it is usually impossible for Christians 
to eat with Hindus. 

The early conflict with polytheism provided the 
Christians with abundant tests alike of their moral 
fibre and their dialectical skill. Could a Christian be 
an actor or even attend the theatre, when theatrical 
exhibitions depended so much on idolatry? Could a 
Christian accept an invitation to a friend’s wedding 
or coming-of-age ceremony, if the invitation distinctly 
stated that it was for the purpose of assisting at a sacri- 
fice? (Invitations to similar functions among the Hin- 
dus to-day are issued under the egis of some god). If 
a man knew no other occupation than idol-making, 
could he as a Christian continue to make idols? Could 
a Christian worker in gold leaf use his skill to repair 
a damaged idol? Could a Christian sell frankincense, 
so much used in sacrifices, or hold a civil appointment 
necessitating participation in sacrifices or theatrical 
shows, or be a military officer, which might involve him 
in offering sacrifices or in condemning a fellow-creature 
to capital punishment ? 

Then, as in our day with regard to similar questions, 
there was a lax party as well as a strict party in the 
church. Then, as now, the lax party could quote 
Scripture as well as the strict party. Elijah was the 
charioteer of Israel; David danced before the ark; 
Moses had a serpent manufactured in the wilderness; 
Joseph and Daniel held civil appointments, and the 
New Testament had its warriors as well as the Old. 

Those who in our day would allow a polygamous 
convert to retain his relations with his various wives 

1 Harnack, Expansion of Christianity. Book II, chap. VII. 


142 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


while a member of the church, rely on the fact that, 
according to the practice of his time and his country 
all his marriages were legal, and that great hardship 
would be involved if all the wives but one were put 
away. ‘The economic hardship at least is greatly 
exaggerated, as the husband may be, and should be, 
expected to fulfil the obligations he has undertaken 
whether he is recognized as a church member or 
not. It is to the credit of the “broad” party on this 
point that they do not justify their attitude by a ref- 
erence to the regular and irregular marriage relation- 
ships of the Old Testament “‘saints,’’ but confine their 
Scriptural arguments to an extraordinary exegesis of 
I Timothy 3: 2. 

In the case of the Jalna Christians already referred 
to, those who advocated the continuance of the drum- 
beating even by Christians took the ground of the 
“broad”’ Corinthians of Paul’s time that an idol is 
nothing, so that beating the drum before an idol is no 
more harmful than beating it before any other piece of 
wood or stone. 

One of the great difficulties of the young churches in 
a non-Christian environment is that of securing for 
the Christians the opportunity of the Sunday rest and 
the Sunday worship. The question is not one of blind 
observance of an ancient and half-understood ordinance. 
In a young Christian community it is even more im- 
portant than it is in the West, where Christian tradi- 
tions are more firmly established, that the people should 
have the stimulus of the fellowship and the worship 
of the Sunday service, and the moral guidance of the 
preaching, often practically the only guidance they 
receive. So sane a judge as Doctor Gibson of Swatow 
gave it as his verdict that, even in cases where it might 
seem to savor of harshness, as when the work of a 


INDEBTEDNESS OF CHRISTIANITY 148 


Christian was to ferry passengers across a river, in- 
sistence on the Sunday rest and worship justified 
itself by the results in the life of the church. 


8. Human Degeneracy. 


As an illustration of the way in which missionary 
experience may shed light on Christian dogma, let us 
take the much-discussed subject of the Fall. We are 
often told that, in the light of the teaching of modern 
science, we should no longer speak of the Fall of man, 
but rather of his gradual Ascent from a lowly origin. 
If Christian teaching on the Fall is supposed to imply 
that man once lived in a state of moral purity, and 
that then, through one man at a definite moment in 
history yielding to some particular temptation, the 
whole race permanently sank to a lower level, there is 
not much to be said for it. But only those who com- 
pletely misunderstand the Hebrew way of writing 
history or philosophy could take such a meaning out 
of the Genesis story. 

The truth of the Fall lies rather in the “downward 
pull” in the moral life, alike of the individual and of the 
race. That there is such a downward pull in each life, 
we are all painfully aware; its classical expression we 
find in the seventh chapter of Romans. But it is no 
less true of the moral and religious life of nations and 
of races. As has been said, the history of the non- 
Christian religions is the history of their decline. 

Thousands of years ago, the people of India had a 
far purer religion, a religion far more in accordance with 
the truth of things, than they have to-day. Partly 
under the influence of the aboriginal religions which the 
Aryans found in India when they entered it, partly 
under the natural tendency of the human mind to 
stress ritual rather than life, Hinduism has become a 


144 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


round of meaningless ceremonies; combined with the 
stereotyping of beliefs and customs which, whatever 
truth or wisdom they once possessed, now result in 
endless cruelty and the strangling of the national life. 
The same is true in large measure of Buddhism and 
Mohammedanism. Warneck has the same story to 
tell of the Battaks of the Indian Archipelago. Their 
language, traditions, and beliefs, all give evidence of a 
relatively loftier state from which they have fallen. 
Not only have they failed to keep up to the standard of 
their own ancestors; they have dragged down to their 
own level both Hinduism and Mohammedanism in so 
far as these have influenced them. The tradition among 
so many peoples of a Golden Age in the distant past 
is not altogether a myth. 


9. Light on New Testament Christian Experience. 


One would naturally expect to find Orfental types of 
Christian experience approximating to those of the 
New Testament. No Indian Christian of recent times 
has attracted so much attention outside of India as 
Sadhu Sundar Singh, something of whose spiritual 
history has recently been told by Canon Streeter. 
He was born in the state of Patiala, in northern India, 
and was brought up in luxury by his wealthy parents. 
His mother was a pious Sikh, who constantly urged her 
boy to live that life of “saintship’’ which is so rever- 
enced in India. He read his sacred books, but none 
of them brought him that peace of mind that his 
mother taught him to long for. He used to persecute 
the Christian preachers that came to his town, and 
once he cut up a Bible, put coal oil on it and burned it. 
In his vain striving after religious peace, he thought of 
giving it all up and committing suicide. He awoke at 
three o’clock one morning, had his bath and prayed: 


INDEBTEDNESS OF CHRISTIANITY 145 


“O God, if there is a God, wilt thou show me the 
the right way, or I will kill myself?” 

He prayed for an hour. Then the room seemed to 
be on fire and in the light he saw the form of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, an appearance of glory and love. A voice 
said to him in Hindustani: “How long will you perse- 
cute me? I have come to save you. You were praying 
to know the right way; why do you not take it?” 
From that moment the Sadhu lived the life of a modern 
apostle. He gave up his beautiful home; rather, he 
was driven from it, because he would not abjure 
his new Saviour. The Indian dearly loves the Sadhu, the 
wandering saint who gives up the comforts and joys of 
home, and wanders through the land in search of peace. 
Sundar Singh believed he was called of God to be a 
Christian Sadhu. After years of experience, hardship, 
and persecution, he went on a series of tours through 
large parts of the world, carrying only his yellow robe, 
his blanket, and his Bible. 


1o. Christianity as the Fulfilment of Other Religions. 


A much-discussed question of missionary policy is 
that of the Christian attitude to the non-Christian 
religions. Are we to denounce and try to destroy them; 
or are we rather to regard ourselves as builders, who 
in Christian teaching are supplying an edifice for the 
foundations already existing in the world religions? 
Here again modern experience helps to light up the 
records of the first Christian generations. The most 
elaborate example of an attempt to expound scien- 
tifically what may be called the broader view is Doctor 
Farquhar’s Crown of Hinduism, in which he takes one 
by one the social and religious ideals of Hinduism, and 
seeks to show that the reality to which each points is 
found in Christianity. This book is informed by a 


146 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


spirit so fine, provides such a mass of material, much 
of it the results of the author’s own researches, and 
altogether makes such an admirable introduction to 
the study of the Hindu life of to-day, that the question 
whether it proves that Christianity is indeed the crown 
of Hinduism becomes of secondary importance. 

It is true that Jesus said: “I am not come to destroy 
the Law or the prophets, but to fulfil”’ (Matthew 5: 17). 
This statement, however, must be taken in the large 
sense in which all the words of Jesus must be taken if 
we are to understand them. While Jesus was the ful- 
filment of every worthy ideal of the Jewish law, he did, 
in fact, destroy forever very much of that law, includ- 
ing all its ritual requirements, especially animal sac- 
rifice, and much that might have been classed under 
moral obligations. He destroyed it, not by any direct 
polemic, but by distinguishing between the ritual and 
the moral, the unimportant and the essential, the tem- 
porary and the permanent; and especially by summing 
up the whole legal system in the law which was no 
longer a law in the old sense, love to God and love to 
man. 

It was from the beginning an element in Christian 
preaching to the Jews that Jesus was the Jews’ Messiah; 
and the Christians soon learned to regard themselves 
as the true Israel, the real inheritors of the promises. 
There was even, as we have seen, a party among the 
Christians that believed that Christians were just Jews 
who believed that Jesus was the Messiah. If this had 
been the whole story, then it would have been the 
simple truth that Christianity was the fulfilment of 
Judaism. But a sharp controversy arose round this 
very point; and, fortunately for the history of our re- 
ligion, the party that triumphed saw in Christianity 
something bigger than the Jewish Law plus Jesus. 


INDEBTEDNESS OF CHRISTIANITY 147 


As for the mission to the Gentiles, when Paul was in 
Athens and saw the altar with the inscription “To the 
Unknown God,” he said to the Athenians: “What 
therefore ye worship in ignorance, this set forth I unto 
you”’ (Acts 17:23). Here again it may be claimed 
that, in God revealed in Christ, Paul offers the Athe- 
nians the reality of which they had caught a dim fore- 
shadowing. Yet surely in his epistles Paul is far more 
anxious to show the contrast between the Christian 
religion and the world religions than any resemblance 
between them, real or fancied. 

Similarly we may try to show that the family and 
social ideals, the ascetic discipline, the theory of incarna- 
tions, the use of images in worship, the theory of karma 
and transmigration (lot in each life being retribution 
for conduct in the previous life) in Hinduism or in any 
other religion, point forward to essential truths of the 
Christian Gospel. But the connection between the 
reality (often the ugly reality) and the ideal is often so 
far from obvious, the explanation has to be hedged 
round with limitations so serious, that we may fairly 
doubt whether we are making things easier for our- 
selves or for those to whom we speak by this method 
of approach. If the “fulfilment” theory means that 
God has never and nowhere left himself without a wit- 
ness, that wherever we go we find some foundation of 
truth on which to build, and that politeness and sym- 
pathetic appeal are more effective than irritating and 
insulting denunciation, it will have behind it all reason- 
able people. If it means more than that, the value of 
this conception of missionary method is much more 
questionable. 


ir. The Many-sidedness of Christianity. 
A feature of the New Testament which is clear to 


148 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


every careful reader is that the needs which the Christ 
satisfied were very varied, and that in accordance with 
their divergent experiences people saw Jesus at various 
angles. If we are not conscious of a very distinct differ- 
ence in outlook as we pass from Mark to Matthew and 
Luke and from these to John, it is only because we 
bring to all our Scripture reading a composite picture 
drawn from all our reading of the New ‘Testament 
and from many other sources. The author of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews does not see in Jesus quite what 
Paul saw in him, and James has yet another viewpoint. 

The many-sidedness of the Gospel is revealed to us 
with ever new impressiveness as it makes its way from 
country to country and from continent to continent. 
We have become so accustomed to the story of the 
triumphs of the Gospel that we hardly realize the 
severity of the test to which in the last century it has 
been put. Never before has the vast and varied world 
of humanity been so accessible. Within the short space 
of a century, representatives of all kinds of religions 
from the lofty speculations of intellectual and spiritual 
giants to the loathsome beliefs and practices of the 
ignorant and brutal animist, peoples of all stages of 
civilization from the cultured classes of India and China 
to the savage and the cannibal, have had the Gospel 
preached to them and lived before them. One of the 
great debts we owe to the young churches is the new 
confidence we have in our faith as we see Indian 
Brahmins, educated Japanese, Chinese Buddhists, 
Indian sweepers, African cannibals, and savages from 
New Guinea sitting down at the table of our Lord, 
drawing from him the inspiration for their daily lives. 
They have one Lord, one faith, one baptism; but they 
come to their common Lord by widely different paths, 
and their indebtedness to him covers the satisfaction 


INDEBTEDNESS OF CHRISTIANITY 149 


of the whole range of human needs, from the longing 
of the saint to be more saintly to the inarticulate cry 
of him who has sunk so low that he cannot picture 
what a human life would be. 

To any but the strongest Christian faith, the work 
which the church undertook in some parts of the world 
would have seemed beyond the power of God himself; 
there were those who did say the task was impossible. 
There are parts of the world where even to read of the 
conditions as the missionaries first met them, leaves 
one with a despairing sense of wonder how, in a world 
made by God, nature and man could combine to be so 
cruel. Yet in many cases these are the very places 
where the gospel has won its greatest triumphs. The 
impossible has become the actual; and the people who 
almost made one despair of a divine governance in the 
world are among those who most strengthen our faith 
that we are all God’s children, that in Jesus Christ God 
himself is revealed to us, and that our hearts know no 
rest till they find it in him. Speaking of his fondness 
for placing side by side a heathen and a Christian 
Fuegian, Darwin wrote in his Journal of Researches: ' 
“Tt was without exception the most curious and inter- 
esting spectacle I ever beheld. I could not have be- 
lieved how wide was the difference between savage and 
civilized man. It seems yet wonderful to me when I 
think over all his [a Fuegian convert’s] many good 
qualities, that he should have been of the same race, 
and doubtless have partaken of the same character, 
with the miserable, degraded savages whom we first met 
here. Viewing such men, one can hardly make oneself 
believe that they are fellow creatures and inhabitants 
of the same world. The success of the mission is most 
wonderful, and charms me, as I always prophesied 

1 Quoted in Stewart of Lovedale, by James Wells, p. 258. 


150 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


utter failure. I could not have believed that all the 
missionaries in the world could have made the Fuegians 
honest. The mission is a grand success. ... The 
march of improvement consequent on the introduction 
of Christianity throughout the South Seas probably 
stands by itself in the record of history.” 


12. The Contrast Between Modern and New Testa- 
ment Missionary Activity. 


If there is a striking parallelism between the mis- 
sionary endeavor of to-day and that described in the 
New Testament, each shedding light on the other, in 
some respects there is a hardly less striking contrast. 
Modern missionaries have usually gone out as repre- 
sentatives of a race that believed itself to be superior, 
the belief usually, until quite lately, being shared to 
the full by those they sought to evangelize. They took 
with them not only religious teaching, but what they 
believed to be a higher civilization, what in many 
cases undoubtedly was a higher civilization. It was 
not only the Christian bringing his religion to the non- 
Christian, but the white man bringing his culture to 
the black, the brown, and the yellow man. In nearly 
all parts of the world, too, there is a language problem 
to be solved somehow before the missionary can get 
on to common terms with those he seeks to influence. 

In the first Christian generations all that was differ- 
ent. At Lystra the people were superstitious enough 
to imagine that Paul and Barnabas were gods come 
down in human form; but, speaking generally, and espe- 
cially when they crossed into Greece and Italy, the 
first Christian missionaries could not seem, either to 
themselves or to their hearers, to be the bearers of a 
higher civilization. The Jew was certainly proud of his 
religion; but, however much he might despise the Gen- 


INDEBTEDNESS OF CHRISTIANITY 151 


tile in spiritual things, when the Gentiles were Greeks 
or Romans the Jewish Christian must have been very 
conscious that he had no ground for boasting, either 
in his culture or in his color, nor had the Jews ever 
been an imperial race, while now they were a subject 
race. 

The reason why we read of Paul and other mission- 
aries passing from country to country and being able 
to preach at once to the people without learning their 
language was that Greek was then spoken and written 
all over the Roman Empire. The letters and business 
documents of that period, which to-day are being 
dug out of the sands of Egypt, even when they come 
from the pens of almost uneducated farmers and trades- 
men, are written in Greek. Another striking difference 
between the evangelist’s conception of his work then 
and now is that, whereas the modern missionary fights 
the battle of the slave, the Indian pariah, and all who 
are being deprived of the elementary rights of manhood, 
Paul and his colleagues engaged in no such crusade, 
even against slavery. That may have been due in part 
to the fact that they shared the common view that 
slavery was a necessary institution of society, Just as 
until quite lately in the West most people believed that 
the illiteracy, the poverty, and the social and political 
subjection of the great mass of the people were among 
the decrees of Providence. In part also it was doubtless 
due to the general expectation in the church, so clear 
in some of Paul’s letters, that the Christ would speedily 
return, so that all matters of social reform were com- 
paratively unimportant. 

The reflection that the first missionaries accomplished 
the marvels that they did, without those adventitious 
aids that have given the modern missionary so much of 
his prestige, should give us a better sense of proportion 


152 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


in appraising the work of our own day. Bishop Thoburn 
is reported to have brought forward, as an evidence of 
the power of Christianity, that, while Washington had 
six thousand models of plows invented by Americans, 
India was using the same plow as in the days of David 
and Solomon. It is necessary to use extreme care in 
associating religion with mechanical and industrial 
progress. Mr. Gandhi is not the only man of to-day 
who is sceptical of the value of this whole concep- 
tion of progress. It is well in a quiet moment to ponder 
the material conditions amid which our Lord did his 
work. Jesus had no means of locomotion but his feet, 
_a rowboat or sailing boat, and, in his triumphal entry 
into Jerusalem, an ass. The only food of which we read 
of his partaking was bread and fish. He was often tired 
and hungry. He left, so far as we know, not a scrap 
of writing. Directly at least, he did nothing to ad- 
vance science. We can hardly conceive of him in- 
venting anything, or wanting to invent anything. He 
steadfastly refused to take any part in the political 
game. ‘That he should increase the wealth of himself or 
of any one else was the very last of his thoughts. 
With all this, Jesus is the greatest spiritual force in 
the world to-day. 


13. Christianity as a Way of Life. 


It is not suggested that all who have gone to other 
lands in the name of the Christ have a fully intelligent 
conception of what they are trying to do. One has 
read of a lady missionary who boasted that the girls in 
her boarding-school had an accurate knowledge of all 
the visions of Ezekiel, and of another who reported that 
her Bible course for the year had been the history of 
the world till the time of Abraham. But, speaking 
generally, in the presence of the clamant needs of the 


INDEBTEDNESS OF CHRISTIANITY 153 


great non-Christian world, our missionary representa- 
tives have been compelled to concentrate on the essen- 
tial things; they have realized that Christianity is not 
primarily a creed, nor a scheme of social reform, much 
less of industrial regeneration, but a way of life. They 
have learned to give central importance to that life 
which is the source of our life. The difference on this 
point, in practice at least, between Christianity and 
some of the world religions is well illustrated by a 
story Doctor Farquhar tells. In Mysore, where Chris- 
tian baptism still deprives a man of his property, 
there were two brothers. One, a man of high character, 
became a Christian. The other, an orthodox Hindu, 
was in prison for some crime. In strict accordance 
with Hindu principle, the brother, whose only offence 
was that he had the courage of his religious convictions, 
was disinherited, and his property went to the Hindu 
criminal. 


14. It Justifies Supreme Sacrifices. 

Our experience in the non-Christian world convinces 
us, not only that Christianity is a way of life, but that, 
in the judgment of those who see life’s values most 
truly, this way of life is life’s supreme good, to win 
which the sacrifice of all else is not too great a price. 
Wherever the Christian Gospel goes, we find men and 
women to whom it is still true that the pearl of great 
price is ample compensation for the loss of all other 
pearls, that the treasure hid in the field is worthy that 
to win it one should sell all that he has. 

Sometimes in the comfortable life of Western Chris- 
tianity, which has succeeded so well in adjusting itself 
to its environment, we wonder whether our religion no 
longer calls for costly sacrifice. We have enough actual 
illustrations of the fact to make us sure that when the 


154 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


“Sell all that thou hast”? comes to us unambiguously, 
there will be a wide response to-day, as in the days of 
old. Yet the doubt insinuates itself, whether the call 
would not come oftener to us if we had a readier ear 
for it. To take one single illustration: We hear a good 
deal to-day about the art of salesmanship. To the 
uninitiated, the art of salesmanship seems to consist 
largely in inducing people to buy things they neither 
need-nor want and cannot afford. Is there no challenge 
here to Christian feeling, as there was in earlier days, 
when Christians were tempted to occupations and 
amusements that involved the condoning of idolatry? 

However this may be, on the frontiers of Christianity 
where our religion is breaking new ground, there are 
always men and women with the reckless abandon of 
the first followers of Jesus. The Indian clergyman 
whom the writer knew best was an educated Brahmin 
convert who, at his baptism, gave up a fortune. He 
kept open house, though all the time one knew him he 
never had a salary that reached thirty dollars a month. 
Though he belonged to the oldest and proudest aristoc- 
racy in the world, he found his chief associates among 
the waifs and strays of the community. Whatever it 
might cost him, he gave a literal adherence to the teach- 
ing of Jesus as he understood it, and lived a humble, 
consistent Christian life. It is in lives such as his that 
the Gospel proves its power wherever it goes. Whether 
it was by accident or design that the Acts of the 
Apostles was left unfinished, the record is still being 
written. 


15. It Owes Much to the New Indigenous Churches. 

In even more direct ways than these, we are becoming 
debtors to the young churches for a new insight into 
our faith. In a famous passage of his Bampton lectures, 


INDEBTEDNESS OF CHRISTIANITY 155 


Bishop Gore said: “Only all together, all ages, both 
sexes, can we grow up into one body, ‘into the perfect 
man’; only a really catholic society can be ‘the fulness 
of him that filleth all in all.’ Thus we doubt not that, 
when the day comes which shall see the existence of 
really national churches in India and China and Japan, 
the tranquillity and mwardness of the Hindu, the 
pertinacity and patience of the Chinaman, the bright- 
ness and amiability of the Japanese, will each in turn 
receive their fresh consecration in Christ, and bring out 
new and unsuspected aspects of the Christian life; 
finding fresh resources in him in whom is ‘neither Jew 
nor Greek, neither male nor female, barbarian, Scyth- 
ian, bond nor free, but Christ all in all.’ In the nine- 
teenth century the Christians of the Orient and of 
Africa were too much under the influence of their 
Western teachers to make their own contribution to the 
understanding of Jesus; but the age of pupilage is 
passing away. From the young churches we are re- 
learning some of the things the age of machines and 
scientific discovery had tended to make us forget: the 
meaning, for example, of Christian patience and Chris- 
tian forgiveness of those who wrong us. We are dis- 
covering afresh that a man’s life does not consist in 
the superfluity of the things that he possesses, nor in 
the speed with which he makes things, nor in the rapid- 
ity with which he travels. Christians in the lands afar 
may teach us yet that our absorption in the things we 
see and touch is but a passing phase in the history of 
Christian thought; that what Jesus did for us he did 
in the spirit of the eternal; and that they who would 
come to God through Jesus must catch something of 
that spirit. 

The Christians of western India, whose song service 
used to consist largely of weak translations of Western 


156 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


hymns set to Western tunes, now never tire of singing 
the beautiful lyrics of that great Christian poet, the 
Reverend N. V. Tilak, who was by common consent of 
Hindu and Christian alike the poet laureate of western 
India; lyrics that tell of the fleeting nature of all earthly 
things, of the abiding rest that is in God and his un- 
changing love. 


16. ItIs a Growing World Fellowship. 


Once again, the young churches are showing us, what 
we are paying so heavy a price for forgetting, that the 
church is a fellowship, a company of brothers and sisters 
with common aims, common affections, and common 
interests, with whom the welfare of each is the welfare 
of all and the shame of each is the shame of all. When 
the men of North America wish to get this sense of 
comradeship they join not the church, but the Kiwanis 
or the Rotary Clubs, the Masons or the Oddfellows. 

Partly through the pressure of the hostile life around 
them, in the lands where the Christian fellowship is 
winning fresh triumphs, the followers of Jesus find their 
comradeship where they ought to find it, in the com- 
pany of those who, by doing the will of God, become 
brothers and sisters of Jesus and of each other. Not 
till the church is a brotherhood will the church have 
the power of a brotherhood. 

There are indications, too, that the young churches 
will help us to cross, not only the gulf of indifference 
that separates Christian and Christian, but the gulf of 
rivalry or even of hostility that separates one Christian 
communion from another. As the missionaries from 
non-Christian lands, taught by experience the petti- 
ness of the divergences in dogma and ceremonial that 
rend the body of Christ, are in the forefront of move- 
ments for healing the breaches, so that we have almost 


INDEBTEDNESS OF CHRISTIANITY 157 


come to regard it as a safe test of any movement for 
reunion whether it has the foreign missionaries behind 
it, so the Christians of the young churches, in the joy 
of a great deliverance and the clear-eyed vision of 
their new enthusiasm, are demanding, and rightly 
demanding, that, whether we follow them or not, we 
shall not stand in their way, as they seek to bring 
all whose spiritual life is nurtured at the same source 
into a fellowship of worship. 


XIV 
WORLD-WIDE CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP 


1. The Appeal of Christian Missions to the Student 
Life of Our Generation. 


The idea of the Christian Gospel as a message, not 
for a sect or a race but for mankind, has made a peculiar 
appeal to the student life of our generation; and rightly 
so. The student mind resents the bird-cage conception, 
whether of life or of religion. If the joy of being a 
member of a world-wide fellowship is part of the at- 
tractive power of Christianity for the Oriental or the 
African, to eager, enthusiastic youth with its generous 
impulses, the joy of having some part in the establish- 
ment of that fellowship is sufficient reward for a life of 
what the world calls sacrifice. To the healthy-minded 
student, there is great satisfaction in leaving a sphere 
in which we compete for “‘posts”’ with others who could 
fill them as well as ourselves, and in going where work 
awaits us, work that can gratify every worthy aspira- 
tion. Every missionary, in his or her measure, is en- 
gaged in the great adventure of changing the orienta- 
tion of a whole nation, in a work which, in many cases, 
by common consent is lifting the whole nation to a 
new level of aspiration and achievement. 

It might be an exaggeration to say that there is no 
talent which cannot be effectively used in the foreign 
field; Schweitzer’s interpretations of Bach would hardly 
be appreciated in the heart of Africa. This one can 
say: that there are few human endowments that cannot 
find abundant scope for exercise in the frontier work, 
and that many of them yield a far larger income of 
utility in foreign service than they would at home. The 

158 


CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP 159 


fear that the student who decides to cast his lot among 
colored people is burying his talents indicates either 
an inordinate estimate of the value of these talents 
or a complete failure to realize the far-reaching sig- 
nificance of the work done by the missionary. 


2. The Remarkable Contributions Made by Women. 


The offers of actual service from students, and from 
a multitude of others who are not in the technical 
sense students, have sometimes, though by no means 
always, outrun the willingness of the church to equip 
and support them. Yet in the nature of the case, those 
who are actually engaged in the foreign enterprise of 
the church can never be more than a small delegation 
from her membership; and the effectiveness of this dele- 
gation is in large measure limited by the extent to which 
it has behind it the prayers, the intelligent, sympathetic 
interest, and the pecuniary contributions, not of a few 
who are “interested in missions,” but of the church as 
a whole. When we discuss the time required for the 
evangelization of the world, we sometimes forget that, 
while we know something of what can be accomplished 
by small minorities of Christians, we have yet to learn 
what God might have in store for us if all who call 
themselves Christians had any real desire to see a 
Christian world and were prepared to pay the price. 

For some time past, it seems safe to say that, in the 
home department of foreign missions, the men of the 
church have been outstripped, both in knowledge and 
in zeal, by the women. This may be due in a measure to 
the greater leisure enjoyed by many women, though 
most men seem to find time for those social and phil- 
anthropic activities which they deem important. In 
part it is the natural outcome of the receptiveness of 
women in the things of the spirit. But is it not to a 


160 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


great degree attributable to the almost instinctive 
recognition by women of what the Gospel has done for 
them; to their imaginative power to picture what life 
must mean for women deprived of Christian inspira- 
tion; to their realization that, where Christian standards 
are absent, women are the first and the last to suffer? 
Many a woman whose horizon otherwise would have 
been the walls of her own home or the boundaries of her 
own parish, has been delivered from all pettiness of 
mind or spirit because, through her interest in Christian 
missions, she has Jearned to understand the ways and 
to fathom the mind of some alien people, has followed 
with deep and prayerful concern the fortunes of the 
Christian cause in some far distant part of the world. 


3. The Unused Resources of Christian Men. 


The missionary task is far beyond the resources of 
any section of the church, however eager. We have 
spoken all through as if the spreading of the Gospel 
were the special preserve of the “white” churches. 
This is very far indeed from being the case. Those 
which till lately we regarded as mission churches are 
themselves becoming missionary churches; and an 
inspiring story might be written of the way in which 
members of the young churches have proved that they 
inherit the true apostolic spirit, the spirit that counts 
the world well lost if brothers and sisters can be brought 
to know God in Jesus. We are, however, dealing pri- 
marily with the difficulties felt about missions in the 
older churches. 

In her work abroad, the church will never approach 
the limit of her effectiveness till some knowledge of 
what has been accomplished, and a vastly deeper in- 
terest in the work, have become general among the 
Christian men of the West. Noble as has been the 


CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP 161 


part played by women in the past, women alone cannot 
meet the requirements of the case; nor can men dis- 
charge their obligations in full by gifts of money how- 
ever generous. That, speaking generally, Christian men 
have never risen to the conception of the Gospel as a 
leaven for the thought and the life of mankind will 
hardly be denied. It may be that we have not made the 
right kind of appeal; and there is something in the 
consideration that we have become so accustomed to 
the achievements of the Gospel in our own environment 
that we hardly stop to ask ourselves what life would 
be like without it. In many cases, too, this failure to 
grasp what Christianity has meant historically is re- 
deemed by no intense personal experience of religion 
such as leaves an abiding sense of indebtedness. 


4. The Ideal Christian Fellowship. 


Perhaps, however, men are inclined to be repelled by 
the flavor of a too conscious piety and churchliness 
which, let us hope without sufficient justification, they 
are apt to associate with enthusiasm for a missionary 
propaganda. For any who feel like that, one would 
recommend a study of the Epistle to the Ephesians. 
The church, as the author understands it, is no self- 
conscious body of superior persons who assemble to 
thank God for their goodness and groan over the sins 
of the outsiders. It is a living fellowship, with Christ 
as its head, the organ of the Christ through which he 
moulds mankind to his will. 

Seen in the light of the Epistle to the Ephesians, the 
work of leading men to God through Jesus is no eccen- 
tric undertaking of a sectarian proselytism. In that 
epistle, Christ is ““Our Peace,” the reconciler. The apos- 
tle had in view a very definite gulf that had to be 
bridged. When the epistle was written, the sections 


162 THE MISSIONARY IDEA 


of the Temple at Jerusalem reserved for Jews were 
separated from the court which Gentiles might enter 
by a stone wall on which were pillars with the inscrip- 
tion: ““No man of another nation to enter within the 
fence and enclosure round the temple. And whoever is 
caught will have himself to blame that his death 
ensues.” ! To the Jews who composed that inscription, 
the temple of the living God had itself become the very 
symbol of the barrier that separated Gentile from Jew, 
a barrier which it was death to cross. In drawing that 
dividing line and defending it with the death penalty, 
the Jews believed they were fuifilling the will of God. 

That line was only one line of demarcation behind 
which the men of those days entrenched themselves in 
an isolation hostile to their fellow men. Hardly less 
impassable was the barrier that separated those who 
spoke Greek from the barbarians who knew no Greek, 
the freeman from the slave, the Roman citizen from 
him who had not yet won this proud privilege. The 
apostle thinks of the death of Jesus on the cross as 
marking the end of the reign of the Jewish law, and 
therefore as flinging down the hostile wall that sepa- 
rated Jew and Gentile. We think rather of the whole 
ministry of Jesus as showing the folly and the irre- 
ligion, not only of the cleavage between Jew and Gen-. 
tile, but of all the walls within which men sought to 
enclose themselves from their neighbors. All exclusive 
classifications were in effect denials of the brotherhood 
of men. 


5. The Family of God Knows no Barriers of Color, 
Race, Status, or Sect. 


The self-contained communities of our day are en- 
closed within barriers as formidable and repellent as 


1 Translation by J. Armitage Robinson. 


CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP 163 


were those of the days of the Epistle to the Ephesians. 
Our bars of color, race, education, birth, and social 
status, our religious and sectarian bars, are still “hos- 
tile, dividing walls.” All kinds of schemes have been 
proposed for establishing the community of the human 
race; but most of them fail just at the vital point. 
At the back of our minds there are always such ques- 
tions as these: ““Why should my maid-servant’s welfare 
mean as much to me as my daughter’s? Why should I 
care for my employer’s interests as diligently as for my 
own? Why am [I to think of the black man’s humanity 
first, and of his blackness only when the claims of 
his humanity have been met? If the Chinaman or the 
Japanese wants to settle in my country, why must I 
study his point of view as faithfully as my own?” 

To all of these questions, we know of no answer, ex- 
cept the religious answer, that which is given in this 
epistle. Not only is God the Father of men, but the 
very conception of a family is based on the family of 
God. To grasp this idea is to see the world task in all 
its breadth and fulness. If we are all God’s children, 
but some, whether through wilfulness or through ig- 
norance, are out of the home, it is for us who know God 
in Jesus, especially in Jesus on his cross, to teach our 
brothers and our sisters to claim their inheritance. 
Forgetting the parable of the prodigal son, men have 
tried to reverse the true order of things. When the 
reconciliation of son to Father is complete, then, and 
not till then, the estrangement of brother from brother 
will find its end. 





APPENDIX 


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I 
GENERAL REFERENCE LITERATURE 


Much of the relevant literature is in the form of 
magazine articles, reports of missionaries and mis- 
sionary societies, and reports of missionary conferences, 
and is not readily accessible to the average student. 

The best general introduction to the subject is the 
study of missionary biography, especially the lives of 
the pioneers and leaders of the modern movement, 
such as John G. Paton of the New Hebrides, Morrison 
and Hart of China, Underwood of Korea, Carey of 
Serampore, Chalmers of New Guinea, Mackay of 
Uganda, Stewart of Lovedale, Laws of Livingstonia, 
and Mary Slessor of Calabar. 

There is abundant material in the reports of the 
World Missionary Conferences held in Edinburgh 
(1910) and Washington (1925). Many valuable arti- 
cles on the subjects discussed in this book will be 
found in the volumes of the “International Review of 
Missions,” which also publishes in each (quarterly) 
number a classified list of recent books and magazine 
articles on missionary topics. 

There should also be some general preliminary study 
of the world, from the missionary point of view, and 
of the world religions, as in the volumes of the “ Mis- 
sion Study Reference Library” and in Doctor R. E. 
Hume’s “The World’s Living Religions” (Scribners). 

It would be well also to make a more detailed study 
of one or two religions; using, for example, for Animism, 
Joh. Warneck’s “The Living Forces of the Gospel”’; 

167 


168 APPENDIX 


and for Hinduism, Farquhay’s “‘ Primer of Hinduism,” 
Farquhar’s “Crown of Hinduism,” the volumes in the 
“Religious Quest of India”’ series, and some of the 
accounts of the Indian religious classics (such as the 
Bhagavad Gita) published by the Christian Literature 
Society for India. 


II 


REFERENCE LITERATURE FOR EACH 
CHAPTER 


CHAPTER I 


Jas. L. Barton, “The Missionary and His Critics,”’ ch. I; 
Robert E. Speer, “Missionary Principles and Prac- 
tice,” chs. I-III. 


Cuaprter II 


Horton, “The Bible a Missionary Book’; Storr, 
“The Missionary Genius of the Bible’; “‘Matthew,” 
“Mark,” and “Luke” (Century Bible or Bible for 
Home and School); Bosworth, “Life and Teaching 
of Jesus,” ch. IV; J. Hope Moulton, “Religions and 
Religion,” pp. 124-146; J. H. Oldham, “‘The Mis- 
sionary Motive’? (Student Christian Movement), 
ch. I. 


Cuaprter III 


Blunt, “The Acts” (Clarendon Bible); “‘Epistle to the 
Galatians” (Cambridge Bible for Schools, Century 
Bible, or Bible for Home and School); Articles on 
“Paul” and other relevant subjects in Hastings’ 
“Dictionary of the Apostolic Church’’; Kirsopp Lake, 
“Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity”’; 
H. A. A. Kennedy, “Vital Forces in the Early 
Church”; Robert E. Speer, “Missionary Principles 
and Practice,” chs. X XI, X XIT; Burton, “‘ Galatians,” 
pp. lvii-lxv; Wilfrid Knox, “St. Paul and the Church 
of Jerusalem’; David Smith, “Life and Letters of 

169 


170 APPENDIX 


Saint Paul”; H. A. A. Kennedy, ‘‘The Missionary 
Motive” (Student Christian Movement), ch. II; 
J. B. Lightfoot, ‘Historical Essays,” pp. 1-92; T. 
R. Glover, ‘The Conflict of Religions in the Early 
Roman Empire.” 


CHAPTER IV 


Harnack, “Expansion of Christianity in the First 
Three Centuries’; Robinson, “‘History of Christian 
Missions’; George Smith, “Short History of Chris- 
tian Missions”; Articles on Missions in “Encyclo- 
peedia Britannica”’ and in Hastings’ “Encyclopeedia 
of Religion and Ethics’; Articles on History of 
Missions in “Encyclopedia of Missions,” by Dwight, 
Tupper, and Bliss; Welsh, “Challenge to Christian 
Missions,” ch. IX; Bliss, “‘The Missionary Enter- 
prise in the History of the Churches,” Part 1; Camp- 
bell N. Moody, “‘The Mind of the Early Converts’’; 
Robert E. Speer, “‘ Missions and Modern History.” 


CHAPTER V 


Welsh, “Challenge to Christian Missions,” chs. II- 
VI; Joh. Warneck, “The Living Forces of the Gospel’; 
Godfrey E. Phillips, “The Outcastes’ Hope”; Robert 
E. Speer, “‘Christianity and the Nations,” ch. V; 
James A. Barton, “The Unfinished Task of the Chris- 
tian Church,” ch. V; Robert E. Speer, “Missionary 
Principles and Practice,” p. 109; Mackintosh, “‘The 
Originality of the Christian Message.” 


CuHaptTerR VI 


Welsh, “Challenge to Christian Missions,” ch. V; 
Lawrence, “Introduction to the Study of Foreign 
Missions,” ch. V; Robert E. Speer, “‘ Christianity and 
the Nations,” ch. I; Arthur J. Brown, “‘New Forces 


APPENDIX 171 
in Old China,” ch. XXII; Dennis, ‘“‘ Christian Mis- 


sions and Social Progress,’ vol. II, Lecture V; 
“Edinburgh, 1910,” vol. II, ch. VI; C. E. Tyndale 
Biscoe, “Character Building in Kashmir”; Mission- 
ary Biographies. 


Cuapter VII 


W. N. Clarke, “A Study of Christian Missions,” chs. I 
and III; Welsh, “Challenge to Christian Missions,” 
ch. X; Lawrence, “Introduction to the Study of 
Foreign Missions,” chs. II and III; James A. Barton, 
“The Unfinished Task of the Christian Church,” ch. 
I; Robert E. Speer, “Missionary Principles and Prac- 
tice,” ch. IV; Robert E. Speer, “‘ Christianity and the 
Nations,” chs. II and III; James S. Dennis, “‘ Chris- 
tian Missions and Social Progress’’; Annual Reports 
of the British and Foreign Bible Society; Annual 
Reports of the American Bible Society; Nicol Mac- 
Nicol, “Tom Dobson.”’ 


Cuapter VIII 


Arthur J. Brown, “‘New Forces in Old China’’; Robert 
E. Speer, “Christianity and the Nations,” chs. I and 
IV; W. N. Clarke, “A Study of Christian Missions,”’ 
ch. II; Welsh, “Challenge to Christian Missions,” chs. 
I and II; Lawrence, “‘Introduction to the Study of 
Foreign Missions,” ch. II; Dennis, “Modern Call of 
Missions”; “The Missionary Motive,’ (Student 
Christian Movement), chs. IIJ-VI. 


CHAPTER IX 


Gibson, “‘Mission Problems and Mission Methods in 
South China”’; Oldham, “Christianity and the Race 
Problem”; Hoyland, “The Race Problem and the 
Teaching of Jesus’; Maurice T. Price, “‘ Missions 


172 APPENDIX 


and Oriental Civilization”; Stoddard, “The Rising 
Tide of Color’; Hodgkin, “‘The Christian Revolu- 
tion”; Robert E. Speer, “Christianity and the Na- 
tions,” ch. IV. 


CHAPTER X 


Moffatt, “Theology of the Gospels”; Denney, “Jesus 
and the Gospel,” last chapter; Kennedy, “Theology 
of the Epistles’; Harnack, “‘What Is Christianity ?” 


CHAPTER XI 


Harnack, “‘ Expansion of Christianity,’ book II; War- 
neck, “The Living Forces of the Gospel,” section 
III; Nevius, “‘Demon Possession and Allied Themes’”’; 
Article on “Images and Idols” in Hastings’ ““‘Ency- 
clopeedia of Religion and Ethics’’; Dennis, “Christian 
Missions and Social Progress,’’ Missionary Biogra- 
phies; D. S. Cairns, “Christ in the Modern World”; 
Mrs. Creighton, ‘‘ Missions”; H. T. Hodgkin, “‘The 
Missionary Motive,’ (Student Christian Move- 
ment), ch. VII. 


CHAPTER XII 


Welsh, “Challenge to Christian Missions,” chs. VII 
and VIII; Bliss, ““The Missionary Enterprise in the 
History of the Church,” part Il; James A. Barton, 
“The Unfinished Task of the Christian Church,” 
chs. VI and IX; James A. Barton, “The Missionary 
and His Critics,” ch. X; Robert E. Speer, “‘Mission- 
ary Principles and Practice,” part III; Dennis, 
“Christian Missions and Social Progress,’’ Missionary 
Biographies; Schweitzer, ““On the Edge of the Prime- 
val Forest.”’ 


APPENDIX 173 


CHAPTER XIII 


Hall, “‘The Universal Elements in the Christian Re- 
ligion”; W. N. Clarke, “A Study of Christian Mis- 
sions,’ ch. VII; Welsh, “Challenge to Christian 
Missions,”’ ch. XI; Lawrence, “Introduction to the 
Study of Foreign Missions,” ch. V; James L. Barton, 
“The Missionary and His Critics,’ ch. II; Robert 
E. Speer, “Missionary Principles and Practice,” 
Part IV; Clementina Butler, “‘Pandita Ramabai 
Saraswati”; Farquhar, “Crown of Hinduism’’; 
Dennis, “‘Christian Missions and Social Progress,” 
Lecture VI; Streeter, “The Message of Sadhu Sundar 
Singh”; Robert E. Speer, “Christianity and the 
Nations,” ch. VI. 


CHAPTER XIV 


T. R. Glover, ‘‘ Vocation”; W. Paton, “‘The Mis- 
sionary Motive,’ (Student Christian Movement), ch. 
VIII. 


Til 


QUESTIONS SUGGESTED .FOR GROUP DIS- 
CUSSION OR FOR PRIVATE STUDY 


CHAPTER I 


1. “The attempt to conceal beneficent knowledge is of the 
_- essence of quackery.’ In what spheres of thought and ac- 

tivity is this position generally accepted to-day? 2. Are we 
necessarily conferring a benefit on backward peoples by intro- 
ducing them to modern knowledge, machinery, industrial 
and commercial methods? 3. “The typical Mohammedan 
trader is a missionary; the typical Christian trader is not.” 
Can you explain this? Would you justify it? 


CHAPTER II 


1. Discuss the statement that the New Testament is a 
missionary book. 2. What passages in the Old Testament 
appealed most to Jesus? 3. What passages in the Gospels 
suggest that Jesus contemplated a world mission for his 
Gospel? What passages suggest that he thought of his mes- 
sage as for the Jews only? Can they be reconciled ? 


CuHaAptTer IIT 


1. In what different ways did the church spread in the first 
Christian generations? 2. What was the real difficulty about 
the reception of Gentile converts into the churches? 3. What 
evidence is there in Acts and in Galatians of the trouble 
caused by this difficulty and the way in which it was ulti- 
mately solved? 4. Does any corresponding question cause 
similar difficulties in our own day? 5. How far is every 
Christian called on to be a missionary ? 


CHAPTER IV 


1. How may we account for the general ignorance regard- 
ing pre-nineteenth century missions? 2. What features in 
Christianity and in the non-Christian world account for the 
rapidity with which Christianity spread in the early centu- 

174 


APPENDIX | 175 


ries? 3. How may one characterize the missions of the last 
hundred years, as compared with those of earlier centuries? 
4. How far have modern science and invention (as seen, é. g., 
in the Suez Canal and the use of steam power) furthered 
missionary activity? 5. What are the objections to the use of 
the following as missionary weapons: (a) physical force, 
(b) political influence, (c) material inducements, (d) easy 
forms of Christianity? 6. What is the significance of the 
work of women missionaries ? 


CHAPTER V 


1. How should Christians view the discovery of true re- 
ligious insight in the Scriptures of the non-Christians? 2. In 
what sense was Jesus unique? In what sense is Christianity 
the final religion? 3. Is there any truth in the theory that 
a nation inevitably works out for itself the religion best 
adapted to its own needs? What conception of religion under- 
lies this theory? 4. Why is so much importance attached to 
the charge that Christianity denationalizes? What truth is 
there in the charge? 5. Is Christianity transforming our own 
national customs and institutions? In what direction may we 
expect this work to proceed? 


CuarptTer VI 


1. What view of religion underlies (a) resentment of re- 
ligious propaganda, (b) religious persecution? 2. How far 
is it true that our life is an expression of our creed? 3. Is it 
right to make a Bible lesson compulsory in mission schools 
and colleges? 4. How far are we justified in speaking of 
Western nations as Christian nations? 5. Is there any in- 
justice in fixing on the present moment as the time at which 
to compare the products of different religions? 6. Why do 
we compare the achievements rather than the ideals of differ- 
ent religions? 7 How may we answer attacks on the char- 
acter of Christian converts? 8. What is the influence of 
heaven and hell on the religious thought of this generation 
as compared with the last? Is the change a healthy one? 


Cuapter VII 


1. Has evangelization in view primarily the individual, or 
primarily the social group? 2. What forms did missionary 
work take in New Testament times? What forms does it 


176 APPENDIX 


take to-day? Can you account for the difference? Is it pure 
gain? 3. Very few of the Hindu students who pass through 
missionary colleges in India ever declare themselves Chris- 
tians. Is the labor spent on them lost, from the point of 
view of the church? 4. Why is so much importance attached 
to the establishment of a church in each country evangelized ? 
5. Consider how long it has taken Western countries to 
develop a Christian attitude to slaves, debtors, criminals, 
the poor, the sick, manual workers, women, and children. 
How should this affect our thought of the progress of Chris- 
tianity in non-Christian countries ? 


CuaptTer VIII 


1. What attitude are we to take to the statement that the 
missionary prepares the way for the trader, or that the flag 
follows the Bible? 2. Can we advocate missions as making 
for world peace? 3. How would you distinguish between 
the missionary and the proselytizer? 4. Is Judaism a mis- 
sionary religion? 5. What led the first missionaries to go on 
their journeys? 6. What class of motives is kept chiefly 
in view, in the official literature of missionary societies, in 
addresses by missionaries, in missionary biographies? How 
far are these appeals in accordance with the spirit of the 
Christian religion? 7. How far is it true to say that Christian 
conceptions of salvation are always changing ? 


Cuaprer IX 


1. Look at the passengers on an average ocean liner. How 
far may they be expected to exercise a Christian influence on 
any country in which they may land? 2. How far are social 
differences forgotten in the Western churches? Are our 
feelings on the color question such as to justify us in sending 
missionaries to colored people? 3. Is our attitude on the use 
of force such as we should wish to teach to non-Christian 
nations? 4. Is Christianity a Western religion? 5. What 
difficulties face the modern missionary from which the first 
missionaries were exempt? 6. Are there any difficulties of 
converts that can be solved by lowering Christian ideals ? 


CHAPTER X 


1. At what stage in the Christian development of a country 
can missionaries be dispensed with? 2. Discuss Protestant 


APPENDIX 177 


sectarianism in its relation to the missionary task of the 
churches. 3. How far does organization tend to preserve, how 
far to destroy, the living spirit? 4. Should we encourage the 
singing of hymns like “Onward, Christian Soldiers” ? 5. What 
is the religious importance of having accurate views on the 
nature of God and on the person of Christ? What was Jesus’ 
attitude to the subject in the first three Gospels? Discuss 
the statement that we should sing creeds, not sign them. 


CHAPTER XI 


1. To what extent does the average Christian believe in 
the unity of God? If the world as a whole enthusiastically 
adopted this belief, in what ways would it affect our social 
and international relations? 2..Is there anything local in 
our conception of God? Do we believe that the hand of God is 
seen as much in the history of China or of Africa as in that 
of the United States or of Canada? Have we any tendency 
to confine God to a particular building or a particular de- 
nomination? 3. Is there any advantage in having the 
church service everywhere conducted in the same language 
(say, Latin)? How are you affected by the use of modern 
colloquial English in prayer or in translations of the Bible? 
4, What is the best that can be said for the use of images in 
worship? Is the Protestant attitude justified by experience? 
5. How far is it true that the modern Christian world is 
delivered from the fears that have tormented the non-Chris- 
tian world? What is the Christian attitude to ghosts, as- 
trology, palmistry, crystal-gazing? 6. How far should mass 
movements into the Christian Church be encouraged? 7. 
Which is more characteristic of Christianity: the note of com- 
fort or the call to sacrificial labor and suffering? 8. Would an 
average city church in North America welcome large acces- 
sions from the “‘slums” or from the criminal classes? What 
light does the answer shed on the Gospel story or on mission 
problems of to-day? 9. How far is the attitude of the average 
church member to death a Christian attitude? 


CuapTerR XII 


1. What are the weaknesses incidental to all missionary 
statistical reports? What use is made of statistics in the 
New Testament? 2. If you visited a foreign outpost of the 
church, what evidence would you look for of the result of the 


178 APPENDIX 


work of the missionaries? 38. In what different ways are 
Christian ideas being taken to the non-Christian world? 
4. How do we justify the plethora of skilled physicians, nurses, 
and surgeons in the West, as compared with the scarcity of 
these in non-Christian countries? 5. If Orientals or Africans 
receive an education divorced from religion, what results may 
be expected? 6, When followers of the world religions gladly 
accept Christianity, what does this show (a) about Chris- 
tianity, (b) about the followers of the world religions ? 


Cuaprer XIII 


1. We commonly divide church members into those who 
are “interested in missions” and those who are not. What 
idea of the Gospel underlies this distinction? 2. How does 
missionary work influence the intellectual and spiritual de- 
velopment of the missionary? 3. Is it the case that money 
spent on, and work given to, foreign missions diminish the 
resources of a church? 4. What light has the work of women 
missionaries shed on the question of the ordination of women ? 
5. In what ways does the study of missions make the Bible 
a more real book? 6. How far is it correct to say that Chris- 
tianity goes out, not to destroy but to fulfil the world reli- 
sions? 7. Does Christianity tend to destroy the individu- 
ality of persons or of nations? 8. What are the chief differ- 
ences between modern missions and early missions? 9. What 
isa Christian? 10. What is our religion costing us? 11. What 
sides of Christianity are the young churches emphasizing ? 


CuapreR XIV 


What kind of missionary appeal is most likely to be suc- 
cessful in the case of (a) students, (b) men members of the 
church, (c) women members ? 


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